Strictly 7 NGD... and so, so very much disappointment :(

[TemjinStrife]

Sorry dude, it sucks to see stories like this. I appreciate that you posted your experiences, though, as it helps protect other customers from shit like this happening to them (and from the inevitable apologists who come out of the woodwork to defend everyone from BRJ to Roter to Etherial to vik.)

 

[ncfiala]

Calling a model DJENT shows just how lazy they are and how little they care.

I think it is very fitting. After all, isn't that the hallmark of djent. Being lazy and not caring that is. Chug, chug, chug, ...

Back on topic, I really feel for you getting such a crappy guitar man. I would be devastated. I'm really thankful to this forum for steering me clear of builders like this. At one time I was considering S7G and Acacia. Then I checked on here and changed my mind. I'll just stick with Carvin. Although I really want a Skervesen. And a Strandberg.

 

[vick1000]

Wow, what a shoddy job. Looks like it's best to just stick to big name custom shops now days unless you want something they can't offer.

 

[decreebass]

God help me bite my tongue if I see this guy at NAMM... Maybe I'll bring a camera and interview him as to what he has to say about your build. I'm actually quite surprised he hasn't chimed in on this thread yet. Usually these shoddy builders/companies put their feet in their mouth by at least page two...

 

[Lorcan Ward]

I think it is very fitting. After all, isn't that the hallmark of djent. Being lazy and not caring that is. Chug, chug, chug, ..

That actually makes a lot of sense.

There is no way this guy will be at NAMM with an S7 booth. He spent so much money on this year's booth and new designs that he almost bankrupted himself which lead to all his staff having to leave.

 

[Tango616]

God help me bite my tongue if I see this guy at NAMM... Maybe I'll bring a camera and interview him as to what he has to say about your build. I'm actually quite surprised he hasn't chimed in on this thread yet. Usually these shoddy builders/companies put their feet in their mouth by at least page two...

doitdoitdoitdoit

 

[ben_hurt]

dude, that sucks. sorry about all that nonsense. I've had zero luck in my custom builds and have sworn them off since then (different companies).

 

[Deepwatertiger]

First off, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you for this guitar being unsatisfactory. We made a mistake in judgement sending you that guitar in the condition it was in. We should have consulted with you in regards the surgery we did to the heel joint to make the neck fit, and we should not have assumed the finish work would be good enough for you.

We were very shocked to see this surface as you had initially sent text messages to Jim saying how much you loved the guitar. Had you let us know of all the problems you found with it, the faulty tuner issue, the screws stripping.. these things happen from time to time and we gladly will replace them. In your case.. there happens to be a lot wrong with it, I am not here to argue that one bit. We are at fault. I assure you does not happen often but sometimes things slip through the cracks, errors in judgement are made, and parts go bad. In your case all of the above. We just wish you had contacted us first before making all this public because in this scenario, we would replace your guitar, AND let you keep the money you received from selling the first one. We WILL still do that for you. We aim to please 100% of our customers, and although it is not always possible for any builder or production guitar, we will do what it takes to make things right in the end when problems like this occur.

At S7G, I am now the recently appointed production manager and handle quality control from this point forward and things like this will not happen again. As mentioned, we have been through hell the past year. We were ghost building for another company, many of you I'm sure know who I'm referring to, and due to reasons beyond our control as well as employees who betrayed and left the company or were fired, that guitar company breached their contract and screwed us out of $100,000... a hit we are still recovering from. AFTER that happened, several employees jumped ship at a time we needed them most, and things only got worse. We then made the decision to shut down the custom shop and only take orders from dealers for production models we can crank out consistently to help us get money flowing and back on track to be able to complete all of our outstanding custom pieces for customers. In these tough times, we have still managed to satisfy FAR more customers than disappoint.. we can't say this is the first time we've had a similar situation like this.. but no guitar company is perfect (some very close, but most do a better job of staying on top of things so that you DON'T see these things surface on the internet). This is not to say we are not at fault for our mistakes, but I guarantee you there is not a single customer out there that complained like this about a guitar build that we didn't try everything we could to make it right and offer to do many things to make it right that would result in us losing money for your satisfaction.

We are not criminals, we are not in this for the money. Jim has not put a DIME of profit in his pocket since the start of this company.. it has all either went into the company, or in the case of several years of operation due to unfortunate situations like i explained earlier, profits were not made at all. Jim remains in business simply to continue building guitars for people in hopes that things will turn around and he can actually make a living off this company. He has a day job that he has been working for over a year now full time just to keep his house out of foreclosure and try to get this company back on its feet. As we try to do that, we thank every supporter that has stuck with us over the years and we encourage any skeptics to please give us the benefit of the doubt until you have seen one of our guitars in person and really gotten to know us from personal experience as a customer, we try our best to stay in touch with all customers and satisfy them the best we can.

So, A.W. ... if you see this message, PLEASE contact us and lets work this out.

 

[Deepwatertiger]

In response to the CNC work, btw, we only cut our blanks with routes and holes drilled on the CNC for consistency (although, yes, occasionally the CNC produces a flawed blank. Final shaping/sanding is done by hand. Fingerboards cut and radiused by hand.. all fret work and finish work by hand. Only thing not done by hand are the things that benefit from the consistent measurements and otherwise time consuming routes and holes and basic shaping.

 

[petervindel]

It's such a shame that you guys keep letting things like this happen. I have an 8 string custom that I got from you guys 1,5 years ago, and it's still the best 8 string I've ever played. Knocks Ibanez, ESP and even the one Mayones I've tried out of the park, but as long as you keep letting lemons like this out the door you'll never recover.
Stop taking orders and make sure the people that have waiting on their guitars for years get their guitars and feel it's been worth the wait.
You guys build great guitars, but the only thing people know about S7G is that you are unreliable and keep sending out lemons.

 

[HighGain510]

Wow... so much facepalm, so little time.

First off, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to you for this guitar being unsatisfactory. We made a mistake in judgement sending you that guitar in the condition it was in. We should have consulted with you in regards the surgery we did to the heel joint to make the neck fit, and we should not have assumed the finish work would be good enough for you.

In response to the CNC work, btw, we only cut our blanks with routes and holes drilled on the CNC for consistency (although, yes, occasionally the CNC produces a flawed blank. Final shaping/sanding is done by hand. Fingerboards cut and radiused by hand.. all fret work and finish work by hand. Only thing not done by hand are the things that benefit from the consistent measurements and otherwise time consuming routes and holes and basic shaping.

If you were building them correctly in the first place, you wouldn't need to perform "surgery" on the neck pocket to have the neck fit. You shouldn't have to consult with the buyer about modifying/"fixing" bad parts at all if you were building guitars that fit together correctly without having to perform special "modifications" to the neck or neck pocket if you were building the necks and bodies properly. If your neck pockets on the bodies and neck heels on the necks were done by CNC, there should be WAY less "surgery" going on with these guitars to get the necks to fit into the pocket properly the first time. Sorry, but something just doesn't add up.

At S7G, I am now the recently appointed production manager

Have you worked for S7G for very long before you were appointed production manager? How long have you been on that team? How is Jim paying you if the company is not making any type of profit as you claimed? Just signed on to work for free/continue working for free? Is this actually Jim posting from yet another new account?

We were very shocked to see this surface as you had initially sent text messages to Jim saying how much you loved the guitar. Had you let us know of all the problems you found with it, the faulty tuner issue, the screws stripping.. these things happen from time to time and we gladly will replace them. In your case.. there happens to be a lot wrong with it, I am not here to argue that one bit. We are at fault. I assure you does not happen often but sometimes things slip through the cracks, errors in judgement are made, and parts go bad. In your case all of the above. We just wish you had contacted us first before making all this public because in this scenario, we would replace your guitar, AND let you keep the money you received from selling the first one. We WILL still do that for you. We aim to please 100% of our customers, and although it is not always possible for any builder or production guitar, we will do what it takes to make things right in the end when problems like this occur.

Again, not knowing how "new" you are to the company, but S7G does NOT have a track record of making things right nor do they have a record of making things right QUICKLY to say the least. There is zero surprise the OP went public with this, some people stayed quiet hoping you guys would fix the garbage guitars you sent out to them and that never happened. Do some searching on your company and see how many satisfied customers there are vs people who got screwed by Strictly 7. I think you might believe you're doing better than you really are in the customer satisfaction department. Why do you think someone would rather sell a brand new build from you at a huge loss rather than deal with you on getting a replacement? You assure him it doesn't happen often? Take a look at how many threads there are like this one on this very forum and tell me that again with a straight face. Have you seen the rant videos Jim posted before he took them down?

We were ghost building for another company, many of you I'm sure know who I'm referring to, and due to reasons beyond our control as well as employees who betrayed and left the company or were fired, that guitar company breached their contract and screwed us out of $100,000... a hit we are still recovering from. AFTER that happened, several employees jumped ship at a time we needed them most, and things only got worse.

If you guys can't get your own shit out the door without it looking completely fucked up or telling customers you'll fix all those broken or non-delivered builds and don't make good on that, why the hell are you guys ghost-building for ANYONE?! Who in their right mind would sign a contract with you to have you build guitars for them?? $100K lost? Yes, I'm sure it was entirely due to your customer not holding up their end of the deal....

Assuming you're brand new, you might want to abandon that sinking ship, Jim is great at telling people his bleeding heart garbage stories about how much hard work he puts into the business, how much pride he has in his work and how he doesn't make a dime, yet he clearly HAS cash that he's feeding into shit like a booth at NAMM every year (and that is NOT cheap... and they don't give loans out to people filing for bankruptcy or defaulting on payments....) yet magically his customers are receiving jacked up guitars or nothing at all still? Sorry dude, sounds like you're feeding this guy the same lines Jim has been feeding customers for years, and unfortunately for you (and despite your plea against posting this stuff publicly first) this is already WELL-DOCUMENTED PUBLIC INFORMATION. You can try to shrug it off or claim there are more satisfied customers than unhappy ones, but we've seen more than enough horror stories from S7G to believe that nonsense.

 

[technomancer]

S7 have released a new website and there's one glaringly big lie right on the front page - "Our guitars are handmade.."
Sorry, and I love CNCs, but when you're getting a lot of work including cutting bodies, inlays etc. done on them, it's no longer 'hand-made'.

Not defending S7G in any way, but I've seen dozens of places that use CNC and still call the guitars hand made. There is a boatload of work that goes into building after the CNC process, so I don't really have a problem with that either. It's not a big deal if a luthier uses a router or a CNC for the basic carving

That said there are so many things wrong with S7 and their treatment of customers I find it hilarious that THIS is the thing that you picked out to call them out on

There's actually a pretty good article on CNC over here http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/lu...take-cnc-timeframes-etc-interesting-read.html

 

[technomancer]

Trustable, atleast for me, implies honesty. And I have a hard time to believe that some shops are not able to quote realistic build times.
Imo it comes down to 2 alternatives:
They have no clue how long it takes to build the guitar in their current order situation or malicious deceit.
Some people do not care about that, at all, which is fine, but for me it leaves a bad taste and I don't get that some people defend vehemently such practices.

Since there was blanket statement thrown there, it's worth noting that KxKs outstanding orders had no promised build time and KxK has stopped taking orders while working on the back log Also two of the three in-stock guitars are orders customers backed out on.

Good advice for anybody looking for a custom:
1) If you're not willing to wait for a build don't order... even big shops like Jackson and Suhr experience delays.
2) If you can't actually afford the guitar don't order (NEVER order something assuming you'll "save up" while you wait... if you can't at least throw it on a charge card at completion don't order it). There's been a rash of guys lately that think it's fine to order a guitar, have the builder spend substantial time and money on a guitar, then go oh sorry don't want it anymore.
3) Don't order from companies that have a track record of being dishonest, screwing customers, or putting out substandard instruments.
4) If pricing looks too good to be true it probably is.
5) If someone is a touring/working musician talking something up realize THEY ARE SELLING YOU SOMETHING and not giving an objective opinion.

These are all pretty obvious yet I see guys on here getting burnt over and over again on them.

For 1 I do not mean accept being promised two weeks and accept waiting two years, however if you do not have the patience to accept delays you are going to be better off not ordering a custom guitar.

5 especially cracks me up when we've got players on here who do things like spend a year talking up pickups they're endorsing and why you don't need more expensive boutique brands... then switch to a boutique brand and tell you why they're the best things ever and you need them. Yet guys on here still take them seriously and respect their opinions. Or musicians that have stayed consistently with a brand of pickup while hyping whatever the newly released pickup from that company was when they came out. How do people follow this stuff and not realize they're being sold to

 

[Nag]

as you can see, I got what I paid for

for less than 2 grand you could have bought an Ibanez Prestige, ESP, Jackson and what do I know that would have been better built. That's ass, you didn't get what you paid for.

I think it's natural to shy away from cheap, new, small builders. But all the established ones started like that too. it's good to give everyone a chance, but NOT by paying everything in advance. paying a product before the product even exists is the best way to get your wallet dried out. A new builder has to prove he's good. once he's established and has a long waiting list, he can pull the prices up and justify it by the quality of his stuff. But a small builder ? take 30%, prove me you're worth sending the 70 remaining % and then send me the finished product.

You can order an [insert famous brand name] online without playing it beforehand because you KNOW they're solid and their shipping company handles them well. a newcoming builder has to prove he can do the same. else, he doesn't compete, and his business will close soon enough.

 

[facepalm66]

Why don't you just sue him?

... and kick his aasss, you know how he looks, right... right?

 

[Deepwatertiger]

Wow... so much facepalm, so little time.





If you were building them correctly in the first place, you wouldn't need to perform "surgery" on the neck pocket to have the neck fit. You shouldn't have to consult with the buyer about modifying/"fixing" bad parts at all if you were building guitars that fit together correctly without having to perform special "modifications" to the neck or neck pocket if you were building the necks and bodies properly. If your neck pockets on the bodies and neck heels on the necks were done by CNC, there should be WAY less "surgery" going on with these guitars to get the necks to fit into the pocket properly the first time. Sorry, but something just doesn't add up.



Have you worked for S7G for very long before you were appointed production manager? How long have you been on that team? How is Jim paying you if the company is not making any type of profit as you claimed? Just signed on to work for free/continue working for free? Is this actually Jim posting from yet another new account?



Again, not knowing how "new" you are to the company, but S7G does NOT have a track record of making things right nor do they have a record of making things right QUICKLY to say the least. There is zero surprise the OP went public with this, some people stayed quiet hoping you guys would fix the garbage guitars you sent out to them and that never happened. Do some searching on your company and see how many satisfied customers there are vs people who got screwed by Strictly 7. I think you might believe you're doing better than you really are in the customer satisfaction department. Why do you think someone would rather sell a brand new build from you at a huge loss rather than deal with you on getting a replacement? You assure him it doesn't happen often? Take a look at how many threads there are like this one on this very forum and tell me that again with a straight face. Have you seen the rant videos Jim posted before he took them down?



If you guys can't get your own shit out the door without it looking completely fucked up or telling customers you'll fix all those broken or non-delivered builds and don't make good on that, why the hell are you guys ghost-building for ANYONE?! Who in their right mind would sign a contract with you to have you build guitars for them?? $100K lost? Yes, I'm sure it was entirely due to your customer not holding up their end of the deal....

Assuming you're brand new, you might want to abandon that sinking ship, Jim is great at telling people his bleeding heart garbage stories about how much hard work he puts into the business, how much pride he has in his work and how he doesn't make a dime, yet he clearly HAS cash that he's feeding into shit like a booth at NAMM every year (and that is NOT cheap... and they don't give loans out to people filing for bankruptcy or defaulting on payments....) yet magically his customers are receiving jacked up guitars or nothing at all still? Sorry dude, sounds like you're feeding this guy the same lines Jim has been feeding customers for years, and unfortunately for you (and despite your plea against posting this stuff publicly first) this is already WELL-DOCUMENTED PUBLIC INFORMATION. You can try to shrug it off or claim there are more satisfied customers than unhappy ones, but we've seen more than enough horror stories from S7G to believe that nonsense.

I had already been working for S7G long before the fallout I described and only recently took over these responsibilities as Production Manager.

I'm not going to waste any more time after this post on here debating with people who are not personally involved with the company or own guitars built by us. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. My main concern in this post was to grab the attention of the customer who received this guitar and offer an explanation in hopes that just maybe some people will give us the benefit of the doubt as we try to rebuild this company.

CNC programs are not always perfect out the gate. It is not a matter of just the CNC performing properly every time, but sometimes we have to go back and re-draw in CAD and fix things. In this case, we did not, and that was a mistake.

Once again. I am admitting guilt on our companies behalf and encouraging as many people as we can to at least consider giving us the benefit of the doubt if you don't know the facts first hand and are only judging based on a handful of other threads posting negative experiences.. which are so often more present in online communities than positive stories. I know first hand and can confidently say we DO have far, FAR more satisfied customers than dissatisfied. Some of these unsatisfied customers have every right to be such.. some were unreasonable, and some just did not accept our efforts to remedy the situation. We have sold HUNDREDS of custom guitars as well as many production models that have not come back to us with negative feedback. We've had problems with less than perfect guitars making it out there in the past, no doubt. We are not a smooth running shop, and have not been for longer periods of time than the few times we caught a break and had some good times. Some of Jim's biggest mistakes were being too hesitant to fire employees that didn't pull their weight.. and we are doing the best to recover from that and all the other disasters we encountered with our small company with a higher demand than our companies financial situation due to untimely disasters allowed us to handle.

I have gone without pay for many months at a time and I am investing a lot of my time in this company in hopes that the few big breaks we've been handed lately will help us get back on track and more capable of producing even better consistency.. that is how this company can afford to continue to run. None of us are pocketing your money. We've continued to go to NAMM to pick up dealers and distributors for our production models and every year has been a success in that regard to help us generate money to catch up on our custom shop orders, which are no longer being taken so we can get back on track.

Believe what you all want to believe. I can't change most of your opinions, and that is fine. Regardless, I figured we might as well offer our side of the story for anyone who is willing to take it into consideration. We are still in this to continue to satisfy the many customers we know are out there and we are working hard every day in hopes that this company will progress as planned as we are investing in one final attempt at a rebirth of this company. I'm an honest guy trying to make an honest living doing what I love to do, and so is Jim. We never leave an unsatisfied customer shit out of luck.. we always attempt to contact them and come to a solution.

By the way, you are right. We should not have taken on ghost building for another company. It was at a time when business was good and we were on track to expand and fulfill it all, but it ultimately destroyed us in the end.

We are only human, doing the best we can to make it in this crazy world and crazy economy.

To all our supporters who we couldn't stay in business without, thank you for always being by our side.

As for our unsatisfied customers, I'm sorry we let you down. If and when our plans to get this company profitable succeeds, contact us and ask for some payback. We'll work on a future low to no cost build for ya depending on the situation.

And to all those who are just following the forums and haven't had a personal experience with us.. I hope just maybe I've restored just enough respect for you to choose not to kick a horse while it's down without getting all the facts.. but I can't stop you, and you have every right and the freedom of speech to do so.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Peace.

 

[TemjinStrife]

Seriously? You call not drilling for cavity covers, using customer builds as "practice," and charging customers extra for body rebuilds based on crappy staining "less than perfect?" I suppose you do have a talent for understatement.

Also, the ghostbuilding Strandberg thing didn't work out because S7G couldn't deliver quality consistently, from finish work to knots to body damage.

Remember, you can say that "we have hundreds of satisfied customers" but it only takes one instance of shitty customer service to torpedo your business. That's the harsh reality of being a custom shop in this day and age. Forums provide a fantastic business opportunity, but with that opportunity comes a real need to make sure you're not putting stuff out there that reflects negatively on your shop as a whole.

 

[canuck brian]

CNC programs are not always perfect out the gate. It is not a matter of just the CNC performing properly every time, but sometimes we have to go back and re-draw in CAD and fix things. In this case, we did not, and that was a mistake.

You're very right here sir. That's why you make prototypes and THEN make products for your customers instead of sending the bullshit you guys already did.

Oddly all the stuff I've cut after Ive finalized the measurements and settings on the prototypes don't need adjustment. If your CNC isn't performing properly every time, then there is something wrong with your CNC.

Being too hesitant to fire people not pulling their weight? You guys admitted weren't paying anyone for a period of time.

I've actually played a few of your guitars and the ones I did play were really really nice guitars. I really would like you guys to return to form and put out quality guitars again. Jim's making it a point to stay in contact with customers from what I can see and that's probably been his saving grace. I flat out offered to come down to give whatever help you guys needed for free (gluing stuff, fretwork, packing etc) and I got zero reply.

 

[leonardo7]

I flat out offered to come down to give whatever help you guys needed for free (gluing stuff, fretwork, packing etc) and I got zero reply.

Probably because only the chosen ones are allowed to be let in to the official secrets of shadiness

 

[TheRileyOBrien]

Just don't let crap like this leave the shop. It's not that hard. It has nothing to do with work load or employees not pulling their weight. The fact that "most" of your customers are happy doesn't justify anything and is a horrible way to conduct business imho. Someone looked at this guitar(and a number of other poorly built guitars) and thought "meh, good enough" and boxed it up and sent it to a customer.

It is not like you overlooked a tiny blemish in the finish and it got out. There are a number of GLARING issues.

Your CNC excuse is a joke. I know stuff can go wrong with cnc machines and working with wood makes issues even more common since no two pieces are alike. If the piece doesn't come out right it should go in the trash or kept as a personal build. You don't just say "lets slap a shim in there and call it good".

Your post makes it seem like to you there was just a simple mistake(s) blown out of proportion by the evil internets. The reason for the bad reputation is repeated offenses of not caring about what left the shop, well documented cases of treating customers poorly, and hilariously out of touch excuses/apologies such as this one.

The only way you can fix this is to deliver nothing but absolute top quality guitars, on time, from this point forward(assuming you get more orders). Good Luck.