FRETPICK
Banned
Not one of you asked if his jaw was alright.
The official Sabre Guitars Thread
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narad
Progressive metal and politics
Found the plant.
FRETPICK
Banned
Erockomania
Studio Geek
His jaw was alright months ago.
FRETPICK
Banned
....and we know this how?
Erockomania
Studio Geek
Because it happened in the middle of my build which was done like 7 months ago. I was in direct communication with him about it. While it probably sucked a bit it did not seem like something that would hinder work. It also didn't seem to concern him too much.
ElysianGuitars
Well-Known Member
If a hockey player can play hockey with a broken jaw I'm pretty sure a builder can build with one. May not be pleasant naturally.
Fred the Shred
Shrederick
While nobody is expected to be a machine and work at an equal pace with amputated limbs, during surgery or while eviscerated by a bandsaw, there is a difference between allowing ourselves to recover from an illness, which is necessary, and disappearing off the face of the globe.
I have no orders placed with Chris, mind you - I am just dumbfounded as to why Chris wouldn't simply set his customers' minds to ease via posting whatever clarifications are necessary here. I managed to play live without the tip of one finger (bled like a pig, which was suitably metal), so I can say with confidence that typing with a damaged jaw is certainly possible, and would help to clear the mess that has taken root here.
I have no orders placed with Chris, mind you - I am just dumbfounded as to why Chris wouldn't simply set his customers' minds to ease via posting whatever clarifications are necessary here. I managed to play live without the tip of one finger (bled like a pig, which was suitably metal), so I can say with confidence that typing with a damaged jaw is certainly possible, and would help to clear the mess that has taken root here.
ikarus
Well-Known Member
The EUGG Cafe group on fb is organizing a run of 12 guitars and i commented, that people who consider getting in this run should check out this thread first.
reaction:
comment deleted
reaction:
comment deleted
sabreguitars
Banned
This has gone far enough lads.
I've deliberately not posted here, and instead concentrated On contacting every customer on our build list, including those existing ones who have spoken of any issues on this thread.
It amazes me really that in such a short space of time people can descend from constructive criticism (after all nobody is perfect - I'm more than happy to hold my hands up if I f**k up - and this thread can attest to it.) into this kind of terribly informed evisceration.
Firstly. - my jaw is fine. It's been fine for ages.
Secondly - out of over 50 guitars shipped in the past 12 months we have had precisely 3 with any issues. I've never made any secret of it, nor have I asked anyone to keep quiet about it. Maybe I was having an off day, or tired, I got sloppy, forgot to check things I should have checked - whatever the buck rests with me but the point is all three of those customers have either had the issue resolved or are in the process of having it done.
I'm not going to comment too far on the issue surrounding Shayne not being able to contact us, he says he sent emails, we didn't receive them, we're now in touch. It's being sorted.
Regarding the stock series (and the custom series for that matter - which I'll touch on), I felt at the time it was unprofessional to make too big a deal of it but given the furore above I might as well lay it out here.
Our last stock run was 10 instruments. The agreement, laid out at the start for all customers is that deposits are paid together and balances are paid together. Once the deposits are paid in full the run begins, once the guitars are ready for final assembly we take the balance. Once all payments are made, we ship in one go. That's how we maintain the price point of the guitars. I have bulk agreements with our timber suppliers, Hipshot, BKP, Artec, our case manufacturer and Parcel Force. All of which rely on purchases being made at full numbers. If we don't ship 10 guitars we lose the discount for example, I don't mind saying the discount is 40% which over 10 guitars makes a huge difference. We have similar terms with our other suppliers.
In previous runs this has never been an issue. However in this run, we had 4 customers decide simply to pull out for financial reasons or otherwise with no good excuse before the run ended. Our margin with the stock series (and the custom series to a lesser extent) means that we don't make a penny until the balance payments come in. As a result, we felt it necessary (and informed all customers) to delay the shipping whilst we tried to collect final payment from these customers. Most of whom simply went dark in the first instance. We informed the rest of the customers after two weeks of trying to do this, that we had been unable however we felt it would be better to take the hit and ship the paid-for guitars anyway. This we then have done. Despite this it appears at least one of the customers - who has received his guitar is still unhappy. I make no secret of the fact that I find this harsh. As a stock series customer we don't do personal updates. He was informed that his guitar would ship in the next week. We shipped it and he received it as we can see. If I could have done more in those two weeks then I sincerely apologise but honestly I felt like we had kept all the stock series customers who had paid in the loop during what was a changing situation.
We have had a similar story with custom orders. Since November we have had 6 customers pull out of builds, either with no notice, no reasonable excuse or again simply by ignoring messages. I've received excuses as wide-ranging as "I used the money for my house deposit", "my wife's maternity leave", "I didn't save enough, can I pay you monthly over the next year?" Through to abject silence. We have even had one customer who simultaneously did this to both myself and Perry Ormsby. I was only alerted to the gravity of the situation when Perry emailed me and I had to let him know it was over a month since I'd heard from him. We had to track down his father just to get a confirmation that we were being screwed. Perry makes more than double the number of instruments I do so it's less of a hit for him but the knock on effect for us combined with the others is significant.
I'm not saying this to garner sympathy, it has no bearing on the quality of our work or communication but I feel as though we're being treated pretty unfairly here.
It's impossible to please everyone, but 3 guitars with problems out of 54 in a year when I was on my own most of the time is forgivable I think, especially as the issues are being dealt with. No company can be perfect all the time and humans doubly so. I feel as though I've done everything I could to put systems in place to deal with issues, I took on a full time assistant in November and since then things have gone pretty smoothly (until now - although the issues raised here in this thread are broadly ones that were dealt with months ago or are in the process of being dealt with.) and of late, having been made aware of people not being able to get in touch, (we did have some mailbox issues with our email for a time earlier this year - and I freely admit I didn't check our Facebook messages as much as I should) I have enlisted the help of David Draper, a sabre customer who offered, to help with communication on our website and social media. He's not being paid, he's simply helping out. What I find strange is that surely this is what people would want, and yet if he posts on here on my behalf - as a representative of the company, exactly what many other companies do. He is banned and branded a "shill" just for trying to calm people down.
This situation has shades of when I was off with my jaw and people accused me of going bankrupt because I didn't post on SS or update Facebook for a month and a half and a tiny proportion of our customer base didn't receive timely replies to emails. I've already said I should have done better but people have made assertions on here that should have been working and made judgements about what one is/isn't able to do with such an injury. I think that's shameful - especially coming from people whom I respect within the industry. I work a 70-80 hour week and Aside from my daughter's birth I hadn't taken more than 5 days off since 2012. I felt I needed a few weeks off after an injury which has left me with a jaw that can become dislocated just about whenever it wants. I didn't cry and moan about it all over the Internet. I took my time off, employed an assistant and came back to work to find people had written me off after 2 years of posting monthly on this forum. I understand people are scared by sheisters like Invictus who literally .... over 40-50 customers and Put out tens after tens of .... guitars, strictly who appear to make their instruments from cheese or guys like Marty Siggery who take on 40 builds and charge way under when they could probably manage 10 at a push.
Sabre is NOT that. We are the only company to my knowledge to have back to back 5 star reviews in total guitar (without paying a penny before anyone mentions it - they approached me both times) and although unfortunate and regrettable, three guitars with issues is something to improve on, not something to be crucified for. We have improved in the past and we will do so now. That is why Sabre is a great guitar company, not perfect yet but getting better all the time. it is kind of silly how our social media output is judged as a measure of how the company is doing, or how busy we are. When I was by myself, I found the actual relationship to be inversely proportional. I.e. I post less when I'm at my busiest - but it appears to the onlooker like nothing is going on when the opposite is the case.
We've made some of our best and most interesting instruments over the past 4 months, and we limit our build lists to make sure this remains the case and prevent the risk of Invictus/Siggery esque issues.
I can't promise we'll never again make a guitar at some point in the future that isn't perfect, but we're improving all the time and have a large (and largely delighted) customer base.
I'd really like to end as positively as possible, and see what people think?
I'd also like to petition the admin to reinstate David Draper (Drapes) if they see it appropriate. Because he was acting entirely on our behalf, in an official capacity, purely out of the desire to help. He has through other channels helped me a great deal with communication and having him on board here is only going to be a good thing. He gets nothing from it financially or otherwise, nor does EUGG who are promoting our next stock run.
Hope this has helped. Fire away anyone with questions or if you feel I need to explain any more.
I've deliberately not posted here, and instead concentrated On contacting every customer on our build list, including those existing ones who have spoken of any issues on this thread.
It amazes me really that in such a short space of time people can descend from constructive criticism (after all nobody is perfect - I'm more than happy to hold my hands up if I f**k up - and this thread can attest to it.) into this kind of terribly informed evisceration.
Firstly. - my jaw is fine. It's been fine for ages.
Secondly - out of over 50 guitars shipped in the past 12 months we have had precisely 3 with any issues. I've never made any secret of it, nor have I asked anyone to keep quiet about it. Maybe I was having an off day, or tired, I got sloppy, forgot to check things I should have checked - whatever the buck rests with me but the point is all three of those customers have either had the issue resolved or are in the process of having it done.
I'm not going to comment too far on the issue surrounding Shayne not being able to contact us, he says he sent emails, we didn't receive them, we're now in touch. It's being sorted.
Regarding the stock series (and the custom series for that matter - which I'll touch on), I felt at the time it was unprofessional to make too big a deal of it but given the furore above I might as well lay it out here.
Our last stock run was 10 instruments. The agreement, laid out at the start for all customers is that deposits are paid together and balances are paid together. Once the deposits are paid in full the run begins, once the guitars are ready for final assembly we take the balance. Once all payments are made, we ship in one go. That's how we maintain the price point of the guitars. I have bulk agreements with our timber suppliers, Hipshot, BKP, Artec, our case manufacturer and Parcel Force. All of which rely on purchases being made at full numbers. If we don't ship 10 guitars we lose the discount for example, I don't mind saying the discount is 40% which over 10 guitars makes a huge difference. We have similar terms with our other suppliers.
In previous runs this has never been an issue. However in this run, we had 4 customers decide simply to pull out for financial reasons or otherwise with no good excuse before the run ended. Our margin with the stock series (and the custom series to a lesser extent) means that we don't make a penny until the balance payments come in. As a result, we felt it necessary (and informed all customers) to delay the shipping whilst we tried to collect final payment from these customers. Most of whom simply went dark in the first instance. We informed the rest of the customers after two weeks of trying to do this, that we had been unable however we felt it would be better to take the hit and ship the paid-for guitars anyway. This we then have done. Despite this it appears at least one of the customers - who has received his guitar is still unhappy. I make no secret of the fact that I find this harsh. As a stock series customer we don't do personal updates. He was informed that his guitar would ship in the next week. We shipped it and he received it as we can see. If I could have done more in those two weeks then I sincerely apologise but honestly I felt like we had kept all the stock series customers who had paid in the loop during what was a changing situation.
We have had a similar story with custom orders. Since November we have had 6 customers pull out of builds, either with no notice, no reasonable excuse or again simply by ignoring messages. I've received excuses as wide-ranging as "I used the money for my house deposit", "my wife's maternity leave", "I didn't save enough, can I pay you monthly over the next year?" Through to abject silence. We have even had one customer who simultaneously did this to both myself and Perry Ormsby. I was only alerted to the gravity of the situation when Perry emailed me and I had to let him know it was over a month since I'd heard from him. We had to track down his father just to get a confirmation that we were being screwed. Perry makes more than double the number of instruments I do so it's less of a hit for him but the knock on effect for us combined with the others is significant.
I'm not saying this to garner sympathy, it has no bearing on the quality of our work or communication but I feel as though we're being treated pretty unfairly here.
It's impossible to please everyone, but 3 guitars with problems out of 54 in a year when I was on my own most of the time is forgivable I think, especially as the issues are being dealt with. No company can be perfect all the time and humans doubly so. I feel as though I've done everything I could to put systems in place to deal with issues, I took on a full time assistant in November and since then things have gone pretty smoothly (until now - although the issues raised here in this thread are broadly ones that were dealt with months ago or are in the process of being dealt with.) and of late, having been made aware of people not being able to get in touch, (we did have some mailbox issues with our email for a time earlier this year - and I freely admit I didn't check our Facebook messages as much as I should) I have enlisted the help of David Draper, a sabre customer who offered, to help with communication on our website and social media. He's not being paid, he's simply helping out. What I find strange is that surely this is what people would want, and yet if he posts on here on my behalf - as a representative of the company, exactly what many other companies do. He is banned and branded a "shill" just for trying to calm people down.
This situation has shades of when I was off with my jaw and people accused me of going bankrupt because I didn't post on SS or update Facebook for a month and a half and a tiny proportion of our customer base didn't receive timely replies to emails. I've already said I should have done better but people have made assertions on here that should have been working and made judgements about what one is/isn't able to do with such an injury. I think that's shameful - especially coming from people whom I respect within the industry. I work a 70-80 hour week and Aside from my daughter's birth I hadn't taken more than 5 days off since 2012. I felt I needed a few weeks off after an injury which has left me with a jaw that can become dislocated just about whenever it wants. I didn't cry and moan about it all over the Internet. I took my time off, employed an assistant and came back to work to find people had written me off after 2 years of posting monthly on this forum. I understand people are scared by sheisters like Invictus who literally .... over 40-50 customers and Put out tens after tens of .... guitars, strictly who appear to make their instruments from cheese or guys like Marty Siggery who take on 40 builds and charge way under when they could probably manage 10 at a push.
Sabre is NOT that. We are the only company to my knowledge to have back to back 5 star reviews in total guitar (without paying a penny before anyone mentions it - they approached me both times) and although unfortunate and regrettable, three guitars with issues is something to improve on, not something to be crucified for. We have improved in the past and we will do so now. That is why Sabre is a great guitar company, not perfect yet but getting better all the time. it is kind of silly how our social media output is judged as a measure of how the company is doing, or how busy we are. When I was by myself, I found the actual relationship to be inversely proportional. I.e. I post less when I'm at my busiest - but it appears to the onlooker like nothing is going on when the opposite is the case.
We've made some of our best and most interesting instruments over the past 4 months, and we limit our build lists to make sure this remains the case and prevent the risk of Invictus/Siggery esque issues.
I can't promise we'll never again make a guitar at some point in the future that isn't perfect, but we're improving all the time and have a large (and largely delighted) customer base.
I'd really like to end as positively as possible, and see what people think?
I'd also like to petition the admin to reinstate David Draper (Drapes) if they see it appropriate. Because he was acting entirely on our behalf, in an official capacity, purely out of the desire to help. He has through other channels helped me a great deal with communication and having him on board here is only going to be a good thing. He gets nothing from it financially or otherwise, nor does EUGG who are promoting our next stock run.
Hope this has helped. Fire away anyone with questions or if you feel I need to explain any more.
He was asked plainly if he was working with you in any official capacity, he lied and said no. Anyone with affiliations or acting as the agent of a builder, brand, etc. needs to be upfront about it. It's been that way for years and is plainly stated in the rules here: http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/site-news-support/145032-official-forum-rules-read-first.html
He wasn't here to "help". In fact I got more than one report and PM from folks in here saying he was harassing them via PM.
He's gone until his ban is lifted. It was not for benignly posting in here, but 1) lying to other users and myself in regards to affiliations, and 2) harassing folks via PM.
Funny how it took him getting banned to see you back here.
Having help communicating is great, but as I said when he was banned (which he obviously relayed to you) you need to choose those folks wisely. They still need to abide by the forum rules, and act accordingly. Even an unpaid "official" represents you as a business and individual.
Fred the Shred
Shrederick
I am always of the opinion that the actual builders in businesses like Sabre is the best person to avoid the internet trainwreck into drama affairs. A lot of apparently well intended posts only served to make an already volatile scenario worse, and didn't really help to clarify anything pertaining the current status of the operation, backlog and deliveries - if anything, all we got from this was more people concerned with the veracity of the statements, especially in light of the more irate types.
TuffyKohler
sawdust generator
What would you like to know? I was in that run, have paid fully, and have received my Syren 7.
TuffyKohler
sawdust generator
Here's my info regarding the timeline of final payment and shipping...
I completed my full payment immediately when I received notice the guitar was done. This was February 10th.
I was told that as of February 27th, 3 people still had not completed payment.
I received an email on March 9th that my guitar would ship, as well as all other guitars that were fully paid for. There would also be a photo shoot of all of the guitars that were paid for 'in the next few days'.
I began reaching out for a response in late March. I received no direct response to any method I tried.
I received an email with a tracking number April 2nd, from a different email address.
Parcel Force tracking sucks.
My guitar arrived April 10th.
I completed my full payment immediately when I received notice the guitar was done. This was February 10th.
I was told that as of February 27th, 3 people still had not completed payment.
I received an email on March 9th that my guitar would ship, as well as all other guitars that were fully paid for. There would also be a photo shoot of all of the guitars that were paid for 'in the next few days'.
I began reaching out for a response in late March. I received no direct response to any method I tried.
I received an email with a tracking number April 2nd, from a different email address.
Parcel Force tracking sucks.
My guitar arrived April 10th.
Thanks for the information.
I guess I just have to wait and wait and wait and wait......
UnderTheSign
Well-Known Member
So a lot of big words from sabre but no actual deeds. Swell.
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