This is Customer Service?

[stevieboy]

I'm guessing it hasn't sounded or played as well since you saw the tenon.

[supa-fuzz]

^ its semi-hollow now, it should sound better!

[digiTED]

Originally Posted by supa-fuzz

^ its semi-hollow now, it should sound better!

LOL

Value added

Sent from my personal mobile thingy using whatever app this is

[ffoont]

I've had the same experience with a Chinese made Hamer. Some of these name brand import guitars look nice but you see the cost cutting when you start poking around under the hood. Multi piece neck butts, sloppy neck joints, veneers hiding nasty looking bodies and more. I've seen a photo of an Epiphone 58 V with the veneer removed that made me cringe. Obviously the manufacturers consider this type of workmanship acceptable because the price point justifies it.

The thing is, even a "cheap" guitar isn't cheap at $400 (or more) and in this age of CNC production, a tight fitting tenon should be automatic in a guitar at that price point.

You have 2 options; put it out of your mind and enjoy the instrument or sell it and take the loss. Either way, if you're like me you'll probably never look at Epiphone (and perhaps Gibson by association) the same way.

[Hetfieldinn]

Chinese chambering.

[gitarzilla]

That's why there's $400 Epis and $4000 Gibson custom shop guitars and beyond. If you want Custom Shop quality, you, sorry to say, need to cough up the Custom Shop bux. Epis are made quick and cheap for a reason. The fact that they're "only" $400 is because they're made by workers who are pretty much expoilted in sweat-shop conditions where they probably don't make $400 in half a year...if you really want to put this all in perspective.

[modernp]

Unless it effects the stability of the neck I wouldn't care one way or the other.

[dconeill]

You're being completely unreasonable. This is a $400-at-retail guitar. It's cheap. If you want astonishing attention to fine detail buy a Benedetto for $20k.

It actually sounds like you got pretty good customer service - they had you ship them the guitar, they inspected it, they did what they thought was a favor to you by performing a setup, they found that you'd voided the warranty by mucking about with the thing. They never said you'd caused the gap, only that you'd done "unauthorized tampering" - i.e., violated the terms of the warranty. It sounds like they did about everything they could for you short of agreeing with you when you appear to have been wrong.

Is the neck misaligned or unstable in any demonstrable way? Doesn't sound like it from what you wrote. It seems to me that you're making up a problem where none exists.

BTW, in joints like this there should be no wood-to-wood contact. Wood contacts glue which contacts wood. If wood were touching wood there wouldn't be any glue in the joint at that location. Anyway, all the stress is in the upward direction - the strings pull the neck toward the bridge, not to the side, unless there's severe misalignment.

How do you know the gap goes the length of the tenon? All you can see is the bottom of the tenon. You'd have to remove the neck to see what's going on in the rest of the joint.

And for $400 retail, how good could the pickups be, regardless of what they're called?

OK, so you'll never buy an Epiphone or a Gibson again; that's certainly your call. But you got good customer service, you voided your own warranty through your own choices, and you made up a problem based on cosmetics where none apparently exists. I don't see how Epiphone is at fault, I certainly don't see how Gibson is at fault, and I don't see how you have any valid complaint here.

When you buy a Kia do you complain that it's not a Mercedes?

[serial]

While the tenon on the upper side has a gap, it clearly is flush and tight below in the pickup cavity (look at the tenon where it's painted black). Shouldn't be a structural issue.

As for the unauthorized comment-they have to note that if you made a change. Stuff like that voids most warranties.

[vivaoaxaca]

Originally Posted by ComanchePlayer

+1 At what point do we stop lowering the bar. With this mindset, the mfg's will start to say hey if we can get away with this at 400 can we get away with it at 600, then it's a 1000.

At some point enough is enough. Lets face it guitars were meant to be built a certain way, and to me this isn't it. I think for 400 bucks it shouldn't be there after all less time cutting away at the neck pocket for a tighter fit wouldv'e yielded a guitar with less labor and cost in it.

All guitar manufacturers that offer products which cover a broad range of price points are performing this kind of calculus all the time. The market can and will settle on a combination of quality, features, and price at which a particular model will sell. Obviously the market has told Epiphone that at this price point this level of build quality is acceptable. The evidence is that they are selling instruments of this quality at that price.

As a single actor in the market you have the ability to judge for yourself what level of quality is acceptable at what price. But Epiphone knows that for every TGP member who obsesses about the minute details of guitar construction there are plenty of people who will never turn a single screw on their guitar and for whom price is a more important factor than any other.

[supa-fuzz]

Originally Posted by dconeill

When you buy a Kia do you complain that it's not a Mercedes?

This is it in a nutshell.

[guitaristanyc]

Originally Posted by ComanchePlayer

+1 At what point do we stop lowering the bar. With this mindset, the mfg's will start to say hey if we can get away with this at 400 can we get away with it at 600, then it's a 1000.

At some point enough is enough. Lets face it guitars were meant to be built a certain way, and to me this isn't it. I think for 400 bucks it shouldn't be there after all less time cutting away at the neck pocket for a tighter fit wouldv'e yielded a guitar with less labor and cost in it.

$400 is really not that much for a guitar today. Given that its American counterpart sells for $2k, you have to expect that corners are being cut somewhere.

[treeofpain]

As long as the guitar does not have any functional issues, I don't see the problem, considering the price point. You can easily fill teh void with super glue if you are concerned with a gap. For me it would not be an issue at all.

[DaveG]

Since it's a "scrap pile" guitar, I'll give you $100 for it...

[rogthefrog]

Beggars the question: why not send it back to the store you got it from and get a replacement under standard return policies most stores have?