Anyone heard from Sherman lately?

[MF_Kitten]

so on that note, wanna get started on shipping those guitars?

we´ll do it differently, to make sure it really gets here this time, even if we have to change shipping method or shipping company. i´m still excited to bring it to it´s home

edit: email or pm? MG or SS?

 

[Qucifer]

Your credability doesn't hold much weight with me. If the guitar had all of these issues, why did you refuse my offer for a return call tag being issued so I could address these so called issues? You were also offered a full refund if you weren't happy with the instrument. You declined.
Two of my customers also offered to buy the instrument from you, and you declined.

To be honest with you Mike... I don't trust you enough to send my instrument to you. I may never get it back.

You promised things over and over and never delivered... I have an MP3 of your voicemail from February where you promised you'd have my guitar ready in April... and never delivered. And then, I never heard from you until May. Shall I share it with the group?

Where's that ATA flightcase you promised me?

Mike, I would have taken a total refund. But you never answered my request to do an escrow... and I don't trust you enough to send you an instrument unsecured.

And, it doesn't matter to me if I'm "credible" with you or not.

I'm just speaking the truth about my experience with you.

As for the pickup spacing issue. They are a great bunch of guys over there, but thay make mistakes too, just like everyone else in the world.
I sent a full scale PDF of the F/b layout to Mike at Nordstrand. Somehow, their printer must not have been set to 100% when they printed it out. The same thing happened with the first run of 8 string pups that I received from them. I specified 74mm (bridge) & 72mm (neck) and received 70mm, & 72mm.
Mistakes happen.

That's all fine and dandy. But you let it ship to a customer like that, and you never mentioned it until **I** brought it up!

I'm sorry that you feel you had a bad experience. If you refused to send it back for me to look into these issues, refuse a total refund, and refuse offers from other people to purchase it from you, there is not much else for me to do then is there?

Again, without some kind of escrow arrangement... that's just a bunch of words. I even offered to EAT THE COST of the escrow, and you never responded.

The bottom line here is I did everything in my power to make you happy, but apparently I couldn't do that.

Yes, apparently you couldn't. And it's important that future customers know what to expect. I never asked for anything other than professionalism, and a world-class custom instrument.

i believe this is called being shermanated

You all can kiss his ass all you want. But I've been through the experience, and I know what the deal is.

And for what it's worth, Mike... I'll STILL take my money back if you'll do an escrow arrangement. I'll turn around and use the money to buy another Oni.

 

[Qucifer]

^^ So why not sell it outright to those who contacted you about buying it if you would still take your money back? Money is money, am I not right.

None of these "other customers" contacted me directly.

 

[msherman]

To be honest with you Mike... I don't trust you enough to send my instrument to you. I may never get it back.

You promised things over and over and never delivered... I have an MP3 of your voicemail from February where you promised you'd have my guitar ready in April... and never delivered. And then, I never heard from you until May. Shall I share it with the group?

Where's that ATA flightcase you promised me?

Mike, I would have taken a total refund. But you never answered my request to do an escrow... and I don't trust you enough to send you an instrument unsecured.

And, it doesn't matter to me if I'm "credible" with you or not.

I'm just speaking the truth about my experience with you.



That's all fine and dandy. But you let it ship to a customer like that, and you never mentioned it until **I** brought it up!



Again, without some kind of escrow arrangement... that's just a bunch of words. I even offered to EAT THE COST of the escrow, and you never responded.



Yes, apparently you couldn't. And it's important that future customers know what to expect. I never asked for anything other than professionalism, and a world-class custom instrument.



You all can kiss his ass all you want. But I've been through the experience, and I know what the deal is.

And for what it's worth, Mike... I'll STILL take my money back if you'll do an escrow arrangement. I'll turn around and use the money to buy another Oni.

Not true on the not getting back to on the escrow return Michael. I have the email to prove it, with the return email saying, "Mike, You and I are done" which was the last contact between us.

I also have the emails of you saying that you will give the guitar a bad review before even receiving it.

To be honest, I don't trust you either, but my offer still stands on the refund if the guitar returns exactly the way you received it, including the screws you broke off in the guitar.

 

[Qucifer]

Not true on the not getting back to on the escrow return Michael. I have the email to prove it, with the return email saying, "Mike, You and I are done" which was the last contact between us.

I also have the emails of you saying that you will give the guitar a bad review before even receiving it.

To be honest, I don't trust you either, but my offer still stands on the refund if the guitar returns exactly the way you received it, including the screws you broke off in the guitar.

Escrow. Escrow is the ONLY way I will proceed with you.

You never responded to me about escrow.

You know what escrow means, right? It's a service that holds your money, and gives you a chance to review the guitar before accepting it and releasing the money to me. It means we don't have to trust each other.

http://www.escrow.com/

And what kind of professional talks about his customers like this?

including the screws you broke off in the guitar.

Yes, everyone... one of the strap button screws sheared in the hole when I was putting straplock buttons on the guitar.

So, Mike... you tell me how much you'll deduct from my refund, based on one of the strap button screws being sheared off?

Let's agree on a price for the escrow transaction...

 

[msherman]

None of these "other customers" contacted me directly.

Crucified told me he Pmed you and you declined.

 

[Qucifer]

Crucified told me he Pmed you and you declined.

I had only had the guitar for a couple of days at that point, and I was still evaluating.

Back on topic, Mike... escrow.

 

[msherman]

Shoot me an email with detailed pictures of the condition of the guitar, and we will go from there.

 

[Qucifer]

I'll email them to you, and I'll also post them here in this thread.

I'm tied up the next few days. But I'll make it a priority to get that done during the day on Sunday.

 

[angus]

So we're going to see pics of these basses soon right!!!

Fingers crossed. He said they'd go out by USPS Monday.

Carry on.

 

[Qucifer]

On top of the fact that he promised you a 3rd guitar to make up for it all and then sold the thing!

He promised me April '09 delivery and threw in an ATA flightcase. Neither of those things materialized in my build. I didn't get my guitar until July, 1.25 years after I ordered it. And I've never received a flightcase.

On with the pictures:

Full frontal:

From behind:

Body detail:

The backside of the body:

Headstock detail:

Back of the headstock:

The new pickups, which Nordstrand made to correct the string-alignment problem:

This is how Mike shipped it to me. Bridge and neck pickup pictures:

If you also look carefully, you can see a mis-cut slot in the brass part of the bridge saddle on the high-E string. The slot in the saddle was completely off-center when I received the guitar. The misalignment isn't due to movement of the saddle piece either, because it was/is properly aligned with the rest of the saddle base.

One of the strap button screws sheared off when I was installing a straplock button. It will need to be drilled out, or an EZ-out used on it, or something similar:

I can understand why people are led to believe that these are special guitars--the finish and woodwork look very nice in pictures (and in person). But once I received the guitar, I was vastly underwhelmed with the attention to detail, the playability and the sound.

Here's another example of a detail problem:

It's hard to see in the photo, but the input jack isn't mounted evenly and isn't recessed. There's a bigger gap between the body and the mounting flat of the input jack, versus the other side, which is flush. It doesn't affect the performance of the guitar, but it looks wonky and certainly isn't what I'd expect on a custom instrument. Low-end production guitars do better than this.

With regard to my comments to Mike about the bridges being mounted in the wrong location on the guitar... I believe the neck angle on this guitar is too steep for the ABM bridges that Mike used. At a nominal action adjustment, the bridge saddles have to be raised up very high. When I received the guitar, the intonation was a mess--a few strings were 15-20 cents out. Most were out, but not by that amount. When I was adjusting the intonation of the low-F# string, the angle of the ABM saddle was steep enough that the string was actually resting on the saddle base, rather than the brass saddle-piece itself--this made the intonation artificially sharp, and as a result, I couldn't get the saddle back far enough to get the string to intonate. This made me think the bridges might have been installed in the wrong spot--I figured out the issue within a day or two, and let Mike know that that was my bad, not his. Here is a picture of the height of the ABM bridge saddles for low action:

And, there's a lot of fret buzz with even moderately low action settings. I think the guitar is going to need a professional fret leveling before it'll play well.

I'll be copying these pictures to Mike via email as well.

Mike,

Please let me know what additional detail you require. There isn't a mark or a scratch on the thing.

 

[Qucifer]

So how much are we going to do the escrow for, Mike?

Is the sheared off screw worth $100? Hell, I sorted out the pickup problem for you... that ought to be worth something.

I paid $3500 + shipping.

 

[Qucifer]

I´m sorry to hear that you custom axe was disapointing Qucifer, and all the rest with delays and what not...

I would probably react the same if my Shamray RGA8 arrived with flaws...but I´m pretty sure I wouldn´t address it on a public forum...

Just my opinion.

Good luck.

J.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work this out with Mike in private.

Maybe it's a misunderstanding on my part (but I don't think so), but I've never been able to get Mike to agree to an escrow return. I don't feel comfortable sending my guitar back to him without assurances that I'll actually get my money back.

I've said over and over that I'm willing to pay the escrow fee. The only requirement of Mike is that he has to put the money up with the escrow folks before I send the guitar--that's how escrow works. He then gets several days to inspect the guitar and make sure its in good condition.

If he's really willing to give me my money back, this shouldn't be a problem for him.

If he had agreed to an escrow arrangement during our last exchange, I wouldn't be here now trying to do the same thing.

 

[NDG]

Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about it sonically?

 

[Qucifer]

Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about it sonically?

The low end is fairly muddy and indistinct compared to other 8's that I've played. Even unplugged, acoustically, the low end doesn't seem very clear.

But that's just my opinion.

After these several pages, it seems to me like a stand-off between the parts.
I really wish both will somehow make some amends to get the flow going and the issues resolved.

It's not a relationship that needs to be worked on. He is the vendor and I'm the customer.

I really don't want to interact with him anymore. The reason why I told him that we were done previously is that, short of going public with this information, I was sure I wasn't going to get satisfaction out of the arrangement and I figured I'd try to make lemonade out of lemons.

All I want at this point is to arrange an escrow so that I can return the guitar and get my money back. I don't ever want to interact with Mike again once that transaction is completed.

If there is someone else who would like to buy the guitar despite the issues I've described, feel free to contact me.

 

[angus]

I called Mike today to confirm that my instruments had been shipped out as promised. He didn't pick his phone up- that's ok. Hopefully he calls me back at his convenience to confirm that they are in USPS's possession.

I'll keep everybody updated.

 

[Qucifer]

And, as usual, no response from Mike.

 

[MFB]

And, as usual, no response from Mike.

I'll save Mike a bit of trouble on this and say he IS also moving from one factory to another, and it's not exactly a quick move

 

[Qucifer]

It's always something.

 

[angus]

I'll save Mike a bit of trouble on this and say he IS also moving from one factory to another, and it's not exactly a quick move

Sure, but wasn't that started back in the end of July or August? It hasn't seemed to slow his production of other instruments, nor his contact with other customers, so I don't know if it's really a valid argument given the circumstances.

I've been a customer of Mike's through multiple moves that I've been told of. It has not correlated to times of better/worse contact.

I've spent about $8000 with Mike- plus the $1000+ I spent on the wood (including a gift piece of bubinga used on one of my basses; the excess of which was also used to make Kevin/Crucified's guitar, an 8 string for me that he sold to another customer, and two other guitars at least). A quick call or email to say that he shipped the instruments/hardware as promised isn't too much to ask.

He said he won't do USPS Shipping confirmation/tracking, so the very minimum would be to let me know it went out so I know to expect it in the next few days.