A warning to my fellow Atlantans: Avoid this music store.

[Matt Parsons]

So I blacked out the Edwards, as you've all seen I'm sure. This meant getting a new switch, which meant the wiring needed to be re-done... I've had bad luck with a soldering iron and good luck with the local music store, Ponce de Leon. They installed the EMGs to begin with and did a fantastic job. The tech working there was a professional named Terry, and I WISH I knew where he works now. You'll know why soon enough.

I take the Edwards in to the shop on Friday, June 27th, at around 2pm. I describe whats up, the wiring scheme, the 18V mod, etc. and that everything was in place, all they needed to do was wire in the pickup selector switch. A VERY easy job for someone competent to do, right? Something like... 4 solder joints? I get a call at around 5pm, telling me its done. Cool! Everything is going great. I go into the store and ask to check it out, make sure everything is fine, etc...

They act a little frustrated. A tiny bit of rolling the eyes, sighing... really subtle stuff but I picked up on it. Can't sneak that shit past the ol' Parsons. They take me back to the workroom, and plug the guitar into an Epiphone practice amp. I use the switch to select pickups, hey it works! Great! Bridge volume works, push-pull splits the bridge pickup alright... The neck volume doesn't work? What?

Apparently they wired it so the bridge volume controlled both the neck and bridge... a universal volume control. Odd... I check to see if they made the neck volume a tone knob. Nope. It doesn't do anything.

I bring this up to a tech. It wasn't the guy that wired it up though. I explain the wiring set up again, how it was a bridge/neck volume with push-pull selector switch for splitting the humbuckers. Not to mention that it was already wired up correctly, and all they had to do was solder the leads to the pickup selector switch... In order to wire how they did, they would have had to completely tear out the wiring, and completely redo everything.

The tech that I'm talking to makes excuses... "Oh well the other guy probably thought it was supposed to be a volume/tone knob setup."

REALLY?!



This is the guitar in question. The bridge volume is the knob near the edge of the body, and the neck volume is the knob close to the bridge pickup. In a traditional volume/tone set up, the volume knob is the one closest to the bridge pickup, and the tone further away. Even if the tech was confused, he did it backwards.

And in order to GET that confused, he would have had to think that a knob with a "V" on it and no capacitor was a tone knob. Brilliant.

Now that they know exactly what's wrong with the guitar, they say they'll fix it up right.

Fast forward to today.

They call me at around 11 AM, and tell me "Hey, your guitar is finished. It sure was a pain in the ass to fix!" Great! I don't really care that it was a pain in the ass, but I'm just happy that its done.

I go in to pick it up a few hours later. What happens next is UNBELIEVABLE

[Matt Parsons]

I walk into the store, say, "Hey, I'm here to get my guitar". They jokingly say, "ahh there was a fire, and all the guitars are ash now!" "Well thats ok, that's my favorite tonewood anyway". The joke seems to go over their head. The tech that recognized me went into the back to get it. He opens up the case, and the other guys all laugh and say, "Ahh, that's the guitar that we WANTED to burn! That was such a pain to fix. Whoever did the previous wiring job was horrible, we had to basically re do it completely."

Again, I'm just thinking: I already told these guys that they are the only ones to wire it. Why do they insist on repeating this?

Anyway, I ask to check it out, make sure its all good, etc. and they give me the roll-eye-frustrated attitude again. I'm pretty sick of their shit at this point. I don't need them to tell me how much of a pain my guitar is to work on, they should be glad that I'm too lazy to learn how to solder and do it myself. And they shouldn't act like its unreasonable that I check my guitar to ensure its working before I pay them for a repair job RIGHT AFTER I JUST HAD THEM FIX THEIR OWN FUCK UP.

I take it out, and plug into an amp, and hey-- It sounds funny. Not quite right. The highs aren't clear enough, the lows aren't tight enough, and the overall sound is way too compressed. In other words, it sounds like they had wired it for 9V... despite me having it wired for 18V and including two 18V batteries as well as two 18V clips... all previously wired in. I take it back to the counter, and they quote me a price: $40. Hey, thats kind of steep... especially since it doesn't sound right... but if everything is done right I'll pay it just to have it done.

I ask to open the back up and check the wiring, just to make sure everything is fine.

Them: ":roll :roll :roll Ok, whatever :roll :roll :roll"

They take me back to the workroom, and the dude puts a screwdriver on the table and leaves. I open up the guitar, and sure enough, its wired for 9V.

Fucking great! I leave the guitar there for a week and they STILL don't have it done right. I talk to the tech, ask him if he could put it in, and he says, "NO."

.... ? What? Why not?

"I don't know how to do that. I tried about a million ways and couldn't figure out how to wire it for 18V".

..... Really? ( I'm thinking: this is literally an operation thats as simple as 2 + 2 = 4, except its 9 + 9 = 18... how can he not know??? )

The dude YELLS, "YES, I don't know, are you trying to insult me or something?!", and walks out front.

I think: $40? For this? An incomplete wiring job? Waiting a week for this simple shit? And then to be treated like shit? Unacceptable. I was going to pay and leave, never do business with them again, etc.

Then I hear this jem:

They're joking out front, not 10 feet away from me. Laughing and the tech is pissed off. He says to the other guys something along the lines of, "If he wants it done so bad, he should just do it himself!"

WOW

WOW

WOW

Holy shit! Holy shit! Seriously? I take a guitar to a tech to be serviced and he thinks I should just do it myself?! WOW

WOW

Holy shit.

Ok. Fine with me!

I walk out of the back room with my guitar, put it in the case, and they ask, "Hey, uh, is everything all good with it?"

Me- "No. I'm not paying $40 for you guys to take a week to wire in a pickup selector switch, take out the 18V mod, REFUSE to do it when I ask, and treat me like shit in the process."

Tech- "We had to totally rewire the guitar! It was all fucked up!"

Me- "Again, you are the only people that have touched the wiring."

Tech- "I don't believe that and I find it insulting"

Me- "I don't care. I've decided I'm just going to do it myself, just as you advised."

Tech- "Hey, what about the $40?!?!"

Me- "Shove it up your ass!"

And I walk out.

[Blarg!]

Maybe I missed it, what shop is this?

Sounds like Ken Stanton..They are assholes for the most part I hear.

[Matt Parsons]

Sorry, I should make it more clear...

Ponce de Leon Music
1060 Dahlonega Hwy, Cumming, GA - (770) 889-7616

If anyone wants to call them and tell them they suck, they're open 10-6

[necroodin]

Place is about 5 min away from me.

Howie Bently of Cauldron Born, teaches lessons up there or did, by I had a similar repair issues up there with my Kramer 300ST, it's never been right since. Dude acted like some sortof jerkoff about it, I think most of them are christians.

[Vhyle]

Maybe I missed it, what shop is this?

Sounds like Ken Stanton..They are assholes for the most part I hear.

The Ken Stanton near me is a good place. The people there are nice. I go there quite a bit.

Now that I think about it, I've never heard bad things about Ken Stanton.

[Metalfreak]

What a bunch of pricks! You should throw a brick in their window.

[Matt Parsons]

Place is about 5 min away from me.

Howie Bently of Cauldron Born, teaches lessons up there or did, by I had a similar repair issues up there with my Kramer 300ST, it's never been right since. Dude acted like some sortof jerkoff about it, I think most of them are christians.

He used to, he quit because, go figure, the management are assholes.

Apparently the guitar tech I remembered, Terry, has his own company now.

[Blarg!]

Maybe I missed it, what shop is this?

Sounds like Ken Stanton..They are assholes for the most part I hear.

The Ken Stanton near me is a good place. The people there are nice. I go there quite a bit.

Now that I think about it, I've never heard bad things about Ken Stanton.

I've heard some stuff about them being assholes about letting people test the equipment and just things like that.

The same *Rolling eyes* thing mentioned above^

[samsara]

Most of this is a by-product of it being run by an incompetent woman who does nothing but drink whiskey in the back of the store all day.

When I took lessons from Howie there, it was a regular thing to be overpowered by drum noise coming from the upstairs. Not surprisingly it was her kid having a drum lesson, loud as can be on acoustic drum sets.

I also was once kicked out of there for playing some Iron Maiden song while trying out one of their amps.

[mrjumping]

Moral of the story is stick to passive pickups

[Matt Parsons]

Moral of the story is stick to passive pickups

Passive pickups need to be wired like anything else.

That said I am thinking about experimenting with them... I've got a line on a custom shop Seymour Duncan and '59 set for $130, the CS Duncan is supposed to be like an EMG 85 but "better".

[slut rag]

damn, i have played guitar for 10 years and i know nothing of what you guys have talked about equipment-wise. i need to get my shit together. nice guitar though. i have a b.c. rich "virgin" n.j. series. do you know the blocks that you tighten the screws into to hold your string in place? they are rusted in and i cannot change my strings and am not good at doing it. is there anyway i can go to a guitar center and have them replace the blocks and put some new strings on?...im lazy as shit, and appearantly stupid.

[Matt Parsons]

Hey dude, if I were nearby I'd do it for you. You might want to entirely replace the Floyd Rose... or just get a new guitar altogether. BC Rich guitars aren't very good, with the exception of USA Custom and the new NJ Deluxe/Pro line.

[InfernalDawnALV]

Im blown away by the fact that you would post a novel about your bad music store experience. Only a few people from Cumming post on here in the first place, and your crying about your guitar isnt going to stop people in the area from buying their strings, drum sticks, cables etc.. from Ponce.

I did however get a good laugh over how you made yourself seem like such a bad ass in what you claim to be the conversation between you and the employees. I bet you sat there and took it, like a bitch.

They probably would have done you a favor by burning your guitar, seeing as how your music is terrible and your ego is obviously huge.

I'll see to it personally that this thread ends up in the toilet.