Terrible customer service

right?

 

I couldn't agree more. We praise good service, and bad service should be decried---loudly and publicly. The public didn't hurt their business---they did. Credit where credit is due. Discredit, too.

 

I got a million of 'em.

 

Please give me their after sale / contact email address. I will auto-email everyday until they do excuses to our community of Gretsch's nuts !

 

Yeah, it's an amplified situation. The attitude is just not right or good.

Myself, here's how I look at nuts on guitars.

A Custom Shop nut should be perfect. No need to explain why at CS pricing.

Proline nuts should be pretty darn good but not perfect, as they are a higher volume production guitar.

Electromatics etc should have a playable nut, but at their price points, looking for a perfect nut is just dreaming.

I have no problem paying $40-$50 for a custom made bone nut from my local doc. He's knows what it takes to make a quality nut in every way.

If the OP's dealer would have charged extra to do it right, that's one thing. But, to do a free nut set up and mess it up and then argue about it, well, I would guess that their guy isn't even a novice at nut work.

Just my thoughts on nuts.

 

100% agree with this. It’s quite plausible, maybe likely, this guitar needed a new nut from the start. In which case the initial failure on the part of the shop was assessment. They shouldn’t have agreed to touch it if they knew it was as good as it could be without a replacement nut. The thing is, once you agree to a scope of work and touch something on that guitar, you’re responsible for it being right unless the customer knows it’s a compromised situation. On the backend, the shop failed in their communication and failed to adhere to an inherent code of ethics. They could’ve said, “We apologize, we should’ve given you better advice and suggested you replace this nut from the start. We made an error in judgement and did work that doesn’t meet our standard, so we’ll make it right and get you sorted with a new nut free of charge.”

OP would’ve been a client for life.

 

@Joe Carducci should def hear about this. How can they be professional sales ppl and be so ignorant. There should be tests for guitar sales ppl.

Ye, I switched to Thomann instead of music store a while back.

 

Lesson learned. These big box stores are great if you know what you want, and want to order items online at good prices.
But don’t go there expecting great guitar service. This manager type probably doesn’t know any better.

 

Marv, ask around your guitarist buddies or local guitarists for a good guitar tech. That's how I found mine. Some of them dont't even have shop, they're a "Geheimtipp".

 

I've never played a Gretsch that didn't hold tune great.
$20 for my guitar tech to do this job
I supplied the bone nut

 

The bad Customer Service is one thing and they should be avoided in future for that. The claim by multiple employees that the Product as a whole is essentially flawed should be reported back to the Manufacturer.

 

Yes. This would be extremely disappointing to the Gretsch company.

 

Sounds to me like the guys at Music Store Cologne are still angry that Friedrich Gretsch emigrated from Germany back in 1882...

 

I concur that Gretsch should be contacted, but I recommend writing a letter and sending it directly to the CEO. Large Companies get millions if emails and they are easily ignored. But a personal letter to the top will get read, partly because a real letter is so unusual now. A copy of the letter should be sent to the CEO of the guitar store also. I did this last month to the CEO of a major American guitar enterprise, and got a very nice personal reply back from him.

I developed this-go-to-the-top policy when I had my own business: I was the top dog, and I wanted to talk to my client company’s top dog, not some lower tier worker bee. It kept project communications and expectations clear and also eliminated billing questions and payment delays. I admit this was not always possible. I had one client that was headquarted in Spain, and another that was 350 miles from my city. I never met those CEOs; in their eyes I would have been the worker bee. But when possible it was a workable policy. A letter is about as close to person-to-person as you can get with a large company.

 

I'll go out on a fairly thick limb and say that this guitar rarely comes with a proper nut from the factory. I own all of one guitar that came properly nutted from the factory. I'll also say that I spent quite a bit of time on my 6119 nut before I got it right.

Proper nut sculpting requires someone who really knows their stuff, especially for that guitar and headstock. Any time I buy a guitar from the "biggest guitar store in xyz", I already know I'm not likely to find a tech who knows what they're doing.

Also, is that nut bone or plastic? That's a first step is to make sure you have good material. I think you need to get to know the "best guitar repair guy" in Germany.

 

Well, no voice from the person that was against trashing businesses. Some one is not consistant. To all of you who told me to give my problem to Gd. I have and still don't have the guitar.

 

I'm dyin' here!

 

Oh my ... sorry to hear that!

I had a similar experience 1,5 years ago. It also was a 5420, and I also could do better than the guy I paid for it - it just wasn't a big store.

I'm used to crappy service from big stores, but I was truly disappointed when it happened at a local luthier's shop ... he actually has a really good reputation, which is why I chose him in the first place, and because of my lack of experience. My nut didn't look bad afterwards, but the amount of detuning by Bigsby-use was about three times as much as before. Strings deeply buried, not a single stroke done on the top of the nut to get them out of there, ... I went there to complain, or to find a solution, and that somehow worked out - I got a full refund and I am banned from his shop forever. I sure can live with that!

Besides his reputation of providing good work, he's also known for being arrogant, which proved to true.

I had my share of trouble with people of that kind, therefore I never mention their names publicly - that only causes pointless trouble I don't have the time for, I just won't recommend their shops or services to anyone.

My current nut looks ... well ... regular. Boring. It works. I filed off as much as possible from the top, so the strings are halfway + a little bit in, I widened the slots towards the pegs carefully and I really have to commit severe abuse to knock her out of pitch by now - I don't do divebombish stuff or anything of that kind, so ... she works fine now. The regular abuse works fine, too.

From time to time, we all meet someone who works bad ... maybe it was a bad day for him or something, I don't really know, ... can't imagine it's like that every time ... having a bad day wouldn't really be a problem, or having messed up a piece of work - I didn't want to be banned or never come back in the first place, but I was convinced that this would be serving me best. When you meet someone who can't admit that a piece of his work isn't that brilliant, there isn't much you can do... He also told me a lot of other reasons my guitar wouldn't stay in tune, of which none has changed since, like the Reverend spring, the Truarc bridge, and kept talking about nice parts I could buy from Göldo to replace these. Still Truarc, still the softer spring, and no tuning problems.

Nuts aren't that hard, but practice and experience is worth a lot there! I then thought, I'd buy as much nuts as I get for the same money he charged me, and practice filing slots on these until I have a nice one and then keep it for a while, and do another one later. So far, I didn't do another one.

If you can, get a set of nut files, a bunch of nuts and prepare one ... without any hurry, it is likely you'll get that done way better than what the picture shows.

 

I don't see ANY reason for a nut to be incorrectly cut on a guitar at this price. Or way cheaper even.

 

I’ve had so many bad experiences with guitar tech services that I can understand how you feel completely.
This reminds me of something judge Judy says. If it doesn’t make sense it’s not true.
Gretsch has been around 100+ years and used on countless recordings and in live performances.
People that aren’t qualified to do the job will often make excuses like this. What’s worse is the lack of respect they have for you that you would believe this nonsense.