Weird customer stories.....

[Possum]

I thought this might be a fun one to do.

One of my wierdest customers I ever had......
This guy was adamant he wanted a certain set of strat pickups I make. Well, this one set only works well for a very small percentage of players, they aren't typical strat fare at all. He was insistent on buying them and I warned him up front that I'd had two customers before him really dislike them. No, he wanted those pickups, I suggested he listen carefully to ALL the sound clips and to be sure.

So he gets the pickups and HATES them. Not only hates them but is verbally abusive to me about how MUCH he hates them. So I calmly tell him, no sweat you have a rewind/exchange guarantee, send them back and I'll send you what I think you should have got in the first place. NO, he WON'T send them back!!! He tells me he is a "big boy and will live with his choice." Uh, what? This isn't an exercise in self punishment, I'm trying to give you your tone :-) No, he refuses to send them back. OK, send them back and I'll refund your money. NO, he paid a luthier and now he is out the pickup money and the installation money. Then he says he'll sell them on Ebay later and tell everyone how much he hates my pickups. What? I have this thing called "customer service" lets cooperate and get you what you need. No, he won't send them back, doesn't want to pay the luthier to take them out. OK, so I actually offer to PAY his luthier to take them out ship them to me, I'll ship out a set I know he WILL like and PAY his luthier to install them in his guitar. NO, he is a "big boy, blah blah blah". OK, so I go on Paypal and I refund his full purchase price and write it off as lunatic fringe. He then turns around and sends the money BACK to me!!! So then I ask him what can I do to make you happy? Well, he's a "big boy" and going to live with his decision and will remove the pickups later and sell them on Ebay........I quit there, I did tell him if he ever did that to tell the buyer if he doesn't like those pickups he can exchange them with me for free........I think I went down in the dungeon and whipped myself mercilessly with barbed wire for my sins, what an asshole I am......

Anyone ever get someone like this? I have other stories but this guy took the first prize award.....

[pupoholic]

I've had my share at Lace, and swapped stories with the Duncan Staff about things like that... Duncan had the best stories.. especially the tech calls.

But so far here, only one guy bailed out and thats cause he wanted remodel money..

he used my T-set for 7 months then decided to go for the refund and use the money to help fund his 7k bedroom remodel...

I did it no questions asked.. Pay pal refund
... but that was someting I'd never do myself to a botique winder,

Guitar Center yes.. LOL..

[WolfeMacleod]

Got a couple...

Long time ago, when business was slow, I sold several set on Ebay.
I had a P-90 set up, and someone contacted me about them.
At the same time, someone was writing to me off-ebay about having some pickups made for his Aluminium bodies strat. No problem, I told him..can do.
The P-90 set on Ebay sold, and then the guy off-ebay tells me he's bought them for his alu-strat.
Yep, same guy...
Gunna take it to a MACHINE SHOP??

I got this in an email once... a real classic! Notice the completely bi-polar, contradictory descriptions...


==========
Hi, I am searching for pickups for a custom made guitar. Please read my explanation.

I´m Searching: Pickups to suit and make satisfying contribution to my kind of guitar sound, not for versatility. Preferably custom made pups for both bridge and the neck position. Pickups are to be direct mounted in tight fitted cavities through the top and into the neck through, to capture more of the guitar's overall resonance. Pups will actually have physical contact with both top and neck-through which are glued together around the cavity areas. Also a internal pickup system will be used for “reading” the wood, blending with the magnetic pups. (Probably a film transducer type, if you don´t have a better or specific advice for that purpose).

The two main issues of a custom pickup would be:

1. Picking up the guitars´ sound in the truest way.
2. Refining/sculpturing and making their own contribution to the wanted final sound.

Wanted sound explained by treble, mids and low-end:

Silky trebles, rounded but clear.

Burnished, silky and enhanced mids.

Tight and balanced low-end.



The overall tone I want:

Burnished and Glassy. It can`t simply be burnished, glassy, silky and smooth enough.

A dark tone quality. Crystal Clear, but on the silky and darker side.

Silky and b[/b]smooth

Glassy, but not hard or edgy.

Crystal clear and articulate balanced with a “oily” tone

Thick/Fat

Dense but not hard and still open sounding.

Articulate focused attack with piano-like brilliance” as Macassar Ebony does to guitars.


Not - What I don´t want is:

Brittle
Bite
Gritty
Grind
Sharp
Nasal
Crunch
Rattling and buzzing (caused by magnetic pull of the strings)
Breakup sound
Brown Sound
Harsh
Sizzling
Ice-pickey
Twang
Quack
Mush
Mud

Qualities in guitar sound to suite my playing style and fusion music:

A clear singing sustain for legato lines using overdrive.

Dense and articulate/defined tone for very fast picked line phrasings (overdrive and clean tone).

Good string separation for closed voice chords using clean amp sound.

Dynamic for differentiating stronger and softer attacks and different points of striking the string .

Guitar used: I am about to get build a neck-through-body hollow archtop with a flat zero radius fretboard.

The Idea of the instrument is simply the density and sustain of a solidbody given the liveliness, tone amplifying/enhancing body and other qualities of an archtop. Also using the advantages of direct coupling that only neck-throughs can provide.

It’s a 24 frets guitar with a tremolo, probably the Stetsbar using a little wider string spacing than usual(if possible), at least it is wider at the nut.

Pickup placements/distance from saddle and neck is of course adjustable as of yet the guitar is not build. But in general I find bridge pickups placed to close to the bridge making a nasal sound which I don´t like. The neck pickup would probably be placed as close to the 24th fret as possible.

Wood selection:

Neck-through: Brazilian Rosewood for glassy, burnished and reverby sound w smooth highs.

Top, back and sides: Koa for strong sweet midrange, warm, thick clear and open resonant tone with tight low-end and lots of sustain.

Fretboard: Macassar Ebony for an articulate focused attack with piano-like brilliance.

The neck-through is in touch with the top at the fretboard, pickup cavities and tremolo/bridge area only. Pickups are to be mounted directly to the top/neck-through, pressed into very tight pickup cavities.

Would be nice if the pickup mounting screws/bolts/bolt´n´nut could be mounted from the back side of the neck through, the cavities would look nicer made for pickups without the dog-ears.


Tone reference

Ideal would be the 1st string of a Classical Gut string guitar striked with an extremely polished/burnished nail. Added sustain as if the note very bowed(as a violin bow). This might demand a pickup making the strings sound thicker than they really are, but not like the

· Lace Sensors Gold in my Strat Plus have some but nice glassy sound to them using clean sound, though they are lacking in other areas especially used with overdrive.


Amp/sound:

Fusion style improv music, using gain overdrive for sustain and easy going legato lead playing sound). A combination of power amp overdrive and gain would be better. Right now I am using the Soldano Caswell preamp and Fender Concert combos (for clean sound).

I searching for an amp with smooth and not brake-up type of sound, combining preamp overdrive with power amp overdrive sound., hopefully I will have Tony Bruno make a custom one. But first I have to have a guitar with convincing pickups.


Pickups I have tried: Stock Anderson H2+ is to woody and dry. Seymour Duncan Alnico II pro ( It has a nice sweet tone, but it is too small and are not polished enough

The Anderson single coils sounds too crunch and not polished enough using overdrive/distortion.

All Mahogany PRS 87` w stock pickups: Very nice midrange, some burnished qualities but not big or open sounding.

Seems like a I don`t usually care for hot pickups. They make the tones coming on to hard, hardens the attack as spitted out of the amp as opposed to hitting a note putting vibrato to for an almost volume swell, blooming appearance. They often loose tone as well made by an unbalanced amount of string sound vs. the sound resonating through the wood. I have not tried a lot though, and mostly spring mounted ones.



Ending with a few questions:

· To which degree is it possible for a pick up to alter the qualities of sound (ex. more silky, glassy and burnished) independent of the frequencies(quantities)?

· Is it possible for pups to make all the strings sounds more equal (as if they were of similar gauge), the treble strings thicker and the lower ones more slinkier/slimmer, without filtering out a lot of the guitars` own sound?

· The art of building pickups as the art of building guitars are more much more than measuring data /specs, I would appreciate your specs/type advice according to the listed aspects, that is to closer the wanted sound qualities I described above?



Output (Inductance):

D.C. Resistance determined by:

1. the number of turns of wire:
2. the gauge of the wire:


Capacitance:

· Steel poles are supposed to make a silky top, it that your experience too?

· “Kinman's special Alnico-5 magnets that exert 40% less magnetic pull on the strings actually allow maximum Sustain” sounds interesting. But some characterises the Alnico magnets´ contribution as gritty with no smoothness, some say its warm and sweet and some say type of magnet makes no difference. What is your experience?

· Lower output Humbuckers, p-90s style, Single coil type or Jazz Master style pickups.

· Potted or unpotted?

· Could the pickups be made of Matching Koa wood or just pickups tops made of Koa (picture below for wood tops or possibly wood construction) tops and gold pole pieces ?

· It will probably be better to make the pickup after the guitar is build and stringed up, but in order to avoid waiting time the pickups could be paid in advance for getting a place in your waiting list. The guitar is done about July next year(2007). And another one is coming up a few months later.

· I am pretty shure you are using the very best of quality parts, although I have to ask, as the request may be an upcharge.

If this sounds interesting to you or if there is a stock pickup you would want me to try before an eventually custom pickup is made, please let me know.



Looking forward hearing from you .

Sincerely,
===========



Now normally, I'm always up for a challenge, but this one took the cake.

[Possum]

holy shit....

Wolfe that same guy contacted me
I think I told him I don't do burnished pickups, its too expensive a process :-)

[OFM]

HEHEHEHEHEHE...

I laughed a lot with your stories...

I have a few stories only, since i've been working in pickups just for a few months...



As Possum said, I always offer rewind/refund guarantee for my pickups. I made 2 humbuckers for a Flying V guitar, and the customer was very happy with its tone. He brought the guitar back, only for a small modification. He wanted the "out of phase" sound when both humbuckers are on.

I said: "OK, i'm a bit busy, so come back in 2 days". This customer was obsessed with golden humbucker covers, but I told him in every way possible that i didn't have Tone-clear covers, and the way I designed the pickup was not meant to have cover. It may look great, but the covers I have WILL alter the tone and i don't recomend you.

I told him 3 times, and the third time I gave up... OK I'LL PUT THAT F%$·% COVER!

Ok, put the cover, installed the pickups out of phase. He went home, and the next day, he sent me an email: "The modification worked the way I wanted, but now the bridge pickup sounds too dark". AAAARRGH... I TOLD YOU! IT WILL ALTER THE TONE!! And everything was just an aesthetic obsession...

[Rob Mercure]

Hey Guys,

I don't generally hang around this part of the universe - generally I don't work on pickups, automatic transmissions, and carbeurators. But I had to comment on the "strangely definitive" customer: I love my Martin D 25K and the light koa back and sides make the guitar almost "float" in the air, especially after a rosewood bodied acoustic. So this "expert" is proposing a guitar with a rosewood neck, ebony fretboard and the rest hollow koa? You might be able to play it on your lap but the minute you stood up the neck would dive to the floor head first! I dunno, but I suspect that the whole thing is a "not so subtle' joke.

Rob

[Stan H]

I guess the guy was working the rounds because I got the same email as Wolfe and Possum.

[kevinT]

Maybe its that BD guy looking for an excuse to bad mouth folks

[David Schwab]

A Whooooooo... what nut cases! Dang!

Ok, put the cover, installed the pickups out of phase. He went home, and the next day, he sent me an email: "The modification worked the way I wanted, but now the bridge pickup sounds too dark". AAAARRGH... I TOLD YOU! IT WILL ALTER THE TONE!! And everything was just an aesthetic obsession...

I have a customer... been with me like 25 years. He loves the look of covers, and then hates the tone with them. We go through this all the time.

Of course pickups can be designed to work with covers... But he always brings me a Duncan that he likes and wants me to put a cover on it... <groan>

[Ruel]

Wolfe that same guy contacted me
I think I told him I don't do burnished pickups, its too expensive a process :-)

Should the guy call you again, route him out to me. I know someone who can do what he wants. He will have to climb Mount Everest though to get to this winder's shop. Problem is, this winder is out of his shop most of the time, running after the Yeti!

[mkat]

Got a couple...

LOL, sounds like a comedy routine.

[WolfeMacleod]

". AAAARRGH... I TOLD YOU! IT WILL ALTER THE TONE!!

That reminds me of another story...

Back when I was using Alnico 8 in one of my strat models, I had a fantastic set of A8 strat pickups in my strat. My personal pickups. They were great. Glassy, smooth, everything I wanted.

Had a guy come in one day and he wound up trying them out. He wigged out and wanted to buy them, bad. At any cost. He had to have a set, no matter what. "These are the only ones" I explained to him...

Well, he wound up going home with them after I got my asking price.
He called several days later, and complained that they were microphonic. I asked him to come in...
When I got there and opend the case, I told him "It's because of your aluminium pickguard"
He insisted that it wasn't, because he'd just paid $75 for the pickguard. He inistsed that I re-pot the pickups.
Funny...they weren't microphonic in my guitar...
I told him they would change, but he insisted anyways. So, I took them out, potted them, and re-installed them. And didn't charge him for it.
He tried them, and went away happy.
He called a week later, complaining that they were STILL mcrophonic, and that they had changed thier tone and he didn't like them. He wanted me to buy them back.
I told him that I'd wanred him they would change, wanred him about his pickguard, and that I could not buy them back because they were now unsuitable for "ME"

In the end, I wound up making him a second set of Alnico 5 pickups, because he'd threatened to "tell everyone, everywhere" He went away with both sets for the price of one.
I never saw him again, thankfully, but I did see the A8 set in a local store, which was eventually bought by the store's owner and he LOVES them.

[Possum]

Another weenie....

This was one that makes me grit my teeth when I remember. A guy called me and wanted a set of P90s, he was playing through a beat to hell old harmony amp, he played some over the phone and sounded pretty good. So while waiting to get his pickups made he starts calling my answering machine at 3 am, "hey Dave just called 'cause I'm sorta lonely, hey listen to this" then plays some awful guitar. I made his pickups in a hurry and got them out to him. He calls and says he loves them, I was hoping that was end of the story.....not. Then I get an answering machine message "hey Dave you know these just aren't doing it for me give me a call." So I call him up and he starts into this rant about how he doesn't think handwound pickups are anything special and can he have his money back, so I say sure thats my guarantee (not anymore it isn't...). He says thanks, he could really use the money 'case his DEALER HAS SOME REALLY GOOD POT JUST IN AND HE NEEDS THE MONEY TO SCORE. Oh, ok, sure dude.......

[pupoholic]

so whos gained that crystal ball 6th sence?
when ya know yer in for it?
just from the way they are asking things?

I got a few guys that call -- that I manage to prolong the topics and not take the order..
one guy called and woke me up Early AM last Sunday.. I like workin 6pm till 2am here.. just seems to work best, and that east coast Vs. west coast time differance... sheeee... it can really jar me up at 6 am here with those poor ol' 9 O-clock, clock punchers who would rather talk tone then do their job...( I know I would too. hehe!) . Great for them... and a little hard on me.. but I take the call.. I try to be here for them all..

[Sock Puppet]

I have a friend who makes bottlenecks, he's had similar trouble with bad feedback because of postal delays (he's very proud of his feedback).

The latest one was a customer who hadn't liked the exchange rate between UKP and USD who returned a bottleneck for replacement because it had been damaged in the post... the largest shard of glass was about a centimeter long but the plastic bag was O.K.

Seven or eight bangs with a hammer I'd reckon.

Pearls before swine Possum, you have my sympathies.

S.