From: Blair Barrett <bCbarrett@...>
Subject: Re: [SaxophoneRepair] Re: Saxophone Warranties
To: SaxophoneRepair@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 11:26 AM

Instrument warranties are a pet peeve of mine and I'm speaking from the perspective of a consumer who has had issues in this area in regards to a brand new bass sax I bought a little over a year ago from one of the better known saxophone manufacturers. They assured me the horn was throughly checked by their tech in Boston before it was shipped to me but the fact the original seals from the manufacturer on the shipping boxes were still intact told me otherwise.

IMO instrument warranties from the perspective of the purchaser are next to useless if there is only one place in the world where the horn can be sent for warranty repairs. The cost of transportation and loss of the use of the instrument while it is being serviced under warranty in most cases exceeds the cost of having the repair done locally by a trusted repair tech. It's simply easier and less time consuming to forget about the warranty from my perspective.

From my perspective fit and finish should be included. You can't warrant wear and tear, but at minimum the pads should be the correct size for the cups and seated properly, the tone holes should be level, the keys shouldn't need swedging, all key silencers should be in place, the springs shouldn't be broken, and the necks should fit properly. After paying thousands (in some cases the price of a brand new car) for an instrument it shouldn't cost the purchaser $500 or more to correct problems from the factory (this happened to me on the above mentioned bass). IMO a horn setup shouldn't cost the purchaser more than $200 in labor to adjust the action to a player's preference. If anything needs to be replaced within the first 30 days of purchase including the neck cork, it should be covered. I don't care if the posts in the ribbed construction were lovingly and gently brazed by tiny woodland elvers who all look like Pamela Anderson, because that all goes down the drain if the fit and finish on my brand new horn is so bad I can't get a note out of it when I breathlessly unpack it the first time. We'd never accept that kind of a warranty on a $12 coffee pot, so why do we accept it on an expensive in some cases hand-made musical instrument?

If you truly want to make your customers happy, establish a network of repair techs throughout the country you trust to work on your instruments so it's worthwhile for your customers to obtain warranty repairs (maybe start with some of the people on this list). If the horns are the quality you say they are then a strong easy to invoke warranty shouldn't really eat into your profits. If it does then you need to go back to the factory you've contracted to make your horns and demand better. That will make your customers extremely happy. As the old saying goes, a happy customer will tell three of his friends. An unhappy customer will tell ALL of his friends.

Sorry about the long winded rant. As I said, this is a pet peeve of mine.

Blair Barrett

From: Blair Barrett <bCbarrett@...>
Subject: Re: [SaxophoneRepair] Re: Saxophone Warranties
To: SaxophoneRepair@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 11:18 PM

What? You can't cover scratches? Now I suppose you're going to tell me you don't cover wrong notes either. ;-)

In my case the dealer is in Bethesda, MD. and I live in the SF Bay Area. The bass was a special order and drop shipped directly from the distributor in Boston once it arrived from Germany (Keilwerth). The distributor claimed their tech went over it, but there was no sign the original shipping container had ever been opened. When I unpacked it and tried to play it, I couldn't get it to play even a high Eb because the neck was so loose in the socket it would spin freely even when the receiver screw was tightened all the way down. It was obvious they never looked at it. The horn was supposed to be 100% hand made. I guess it was too much to expect some attention to detail especially when I could have bought a new car with the money I paid for that horn.

I took it to my repair tech to set it up. I was shocked to hear everything that was wrong with the horn and how much work it was going to take to make it playable. I called the dealer who sold me the horn and they were shocked too. They contacted the distributor who refused to cover the repairs even though they were clearly manufacturing defects because I didn't follow their un-communicated warranty procedure, which was ship the horn back to them at my own expense (it would have cost even more the the very hefty repair bill to ship it). The dealer finally convinced the distributor they needed to cover the repairs for at least the most obvious defects and they ended up sending me a check for most of the bill. My repair guy was amazed they sent that check. He said that was the first time in his long career he's ever seen a manufacturer actually pay to have a warranty repair done. Most of the time the dealers either send them back, which is difficult to do with a special order bass that takes six months from order to delivery, or they eat the repairs themselves, which is what the music stores where I used to work as a repair tech did. When I was in the USMC I'd just fix them and move on. We didn't have time to deal with warranty repairs.

Anyway enough of my story of woe. Things are good now even though I'll never buy another new Keilwerth again. I've communicated privately with Steve who assures me he'd never ever let a horn go out in that bad of shape and that he'll be reasonable if the rare problem happens. That's good enough for me and I'm looking forward to paying him a visit later this summer to try out one of his baris while I'm visiting New Orleans because one can never have too many baris.

Blair Barrett

P.S. I used to be in the biz a long time ago, but I found repairing computers earned a better living than repairing horns. I still dabble in repairing, mostly diagnosing problems for friends and doing the occasional emergency field repair. I take my personal horns to someone who has a bench, better equipment, as well as more experience and knowledge than I.

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Bill Hausmann <zoot51@yahoo. com> wrote:

Our head sax guy goes over all the intermediate and pro saxes when they come in (our brass guys do comparable checks, and we also do the clarinets, oboes, etc.)  Sometimes we have to return horns, especially for finish flaws.  You are right that key leveling, key corks, swedging issues, etc. are not acceptable.  They DO constitute warrantee issues which, for mainstream lines, are taken care of by the dealer.  Finishes simply cannot be warranteed.  Funny body chemistry can destroy lacquer in no time.  Some people tarmish silver tremendously, too.  And you can't warrantee against scratches. Bill Hausmann If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!