Official Luthiers Forum!

Or that level of personal connection. What about the guys that can’t just call Dan or get noticed by Brock? I don’t think the issue was resolved so much as Hesh was placated thanks to his industry ties.

I’m stunned by the turn Stew-Mac’s taken, and until any ordinary person can get in touch with them or get their issues resolved, nothing has been addressed.


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You might consider the Bassman Micro plans-built amplifier from Rob Robinette for your next,

Or that level of personal connection. What about the guys that can’t just call Dan or get noticed by Brock? I don’t think the issue was resolved so much as Hesh was placated thanks to his industry ties.

I’m stunned by the turn Stew-Mac’s taken, and until any ordinary person can get in touch with them or get their issues resolved, nothing has been addressed.


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Does this summarize the complaints?

1.) Defective part
2.) No phone number
3.) Did not respond to email within 24 hours

I am confident StewMac would have replaced the defective part without Brock or Dan getting involved. That may have taken a couple more days, and I appreciate the annoyance factor, but I don't think you need connections for StewMac to make something right. When I email them, they email me back. Not immediately, but they do try to be helpful.

You might consider the Bassman Micro plans-built amplifier from Rob Robinette for your next, thus avoiding dependence on the support chain from the kit manufacturer or distributor. Mr. Robinette has a huge builder base for his low-power and full-power interpretations of classic amps like the 59 Bassman/Marshall JTM45 and excellent support on the Shock Brothers forum on TDPRI. I have the cabinet (sans the pink and brown Tolex) and the BOM for Mr. Robinette's 1963 AB763 SRV-inspired Blackvibe (a single channel reverb-less/trem-less blackface Vibroverb) that sits waiting for time and attention... a Strymon Flint will handle the vibrato channel duties should I become a much, much more accomplished player as a result of freak COVID booster vaccine modifications to my DNA (nothing is impossible, right?) or (more likely) time to practice.

The Bassman Micro in particular is a near-ideal small repair shop amp...enough power to get obnoxious and quite gig-able volume levels, a master volume to allow both clean and tweed distortion at reasonable bedroom or basement volumes, and two different power levels just from swapping out the single power tube. We built a total of four micro-Bassman at Greenridge, including my own (pink turret board material was almost impossible to find!), and all used lighter-weight white pine dovetailed cabinets and the higher output 12BH7A power tube in push-pull configuration. I later converted mine to the EZ81 tube rectifier configuration, but the other shop amps are all still diode rectified amps in keeping with their dedicated shop amp role.

https://robrobinette.com/Bassman_Micro.htm

This is what I have been thinking since this turned into “Stew Mac is taking care of the issue now.”

The online community is seeing a rash of people complaining about the customer service Stew Mac is now providing. It is way beyond the few threads here. I want to be lenient and understanding to the current times but there seems to be more too it than that. I don’t think that Hesh knowing Brock or Dan and getting some resolution is in anyway indicative of the problem being addressed. In some ways it feels like the opposite. I’d like to believe that this thread here will be the push to get the company to resolve their issues but I’m not convinced. It is not like they are just now hearing that the community is disappointed with their service because Hesh spoke up.

People have been complaining to stew Mac, they have to be aware. If they have not been, and it simply took Hesh talking to Brock about his amp, the. Whoever is steering the ship is truly lost.

I second the Bassman Micro - it was my second amp, first being a Champ Micro, also by Rob Robinette.

Does this summarize the complaints?

1.) Defective part
2.) No phone number
3.) Did not respond to email within 24 hours

I am confident StewMac would have replaced the defective part without Brock or Dan getting involved. That may have taken a couple more days, and I appreciate the annoyance factor, but I don't think you need connections for StewMac to make something right. When I email them, they email me back. Not immediately, but they do try to be helpful.

This thread here has the attention of top SM management and they are responding very well to me and they are also very aware, now of these issues impacting others. I do know Dan personally, he is a friend and Brock too and they both came forward to help me.

Without giving details, people do share confidences with me I strongly suspect that things will improve for all shortly. Please remember every industry has massive supply chain issues and the trade war is also taking it's toll since I live in the Detroit area and the auto industry is way down too, no chips...

There are some good reasons, this is all I can share why SM had issues and has issues and I also know of other good reasons why this will improve. I would hang in and expect SM's legendary customer service to return and I try very hard to never, never mislead people. That's all I can say and remain who I am as a person. I hope you understand and thanks.

One last thing. I'm a natural cynic but the duality of Hesh has be also believing in people, good people who want to do the right thing much if not most of the time. SM has excellent people and that's going to result in resolution and improvement. That's my belief.

It will get better.

You might consider the Bassman Micro plans-built amplifier from Rob Robinette for your next, thus avoiding dependence on the support chain from the kit manufacturer or distributor. Mr. Robinette has a huge builder base for his low-power and full-power interpretations of classic amps like the 59 Bassman/Marshall JTM45 and excellent support on the Shock Brothers forum on TDPRI. I have the cabinet (sans the pink and brown Tolex) and the BOM for Mr. Robinette's 1963 AB763 SRV-inspired Blackvibe (a single channel reverb-less/trem-less blackface Vibroverb) that sits waiting for time and attention... a Strymon Flint will handle the vibrato channel duties should I become a much, much more accomplished player as a result of freak COVID booster vaccine modifications to my DNA (nothing is impossible, right?) or (more likely) time to practice.

The Bassman Micro in particular is a near-ideal small repair shop amp...enough power to get obnoxious and quite gig-able volume levels, a master volume to allow both clean and tweed distortion at reasonable bedroom or basement volumes, and two different power levels just from swapping out the single power tube. We built a total of four micro-Bassman at Greenridge, including my own (pink turret board material was almost impossible to find!), and all used lighter-weight white pine dovetailed cabinets and the higher output 12BH7A power tube in push-pull configuration. I later converted mine to the EZ81 tube rectifier configuration, but the other shop amps are all still diode rectified amps in keeping with their dedicated shop amp role.

https://robrobinette.com/Bassman_Micro.htm

how's that for a positive spin James?

Mr. Breakstone:

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Stock is an aerospace engineer, although I believe his summers in college and his grad work included the usual electronics troubleshooting, given the need to build and operate a range of electronics devices and systems for wind tunnel and flight data collection tasks. I believe Mr. Stock still does some systems fabrication and troubleshooting, as he remains an active company pilot and engineer doing flight test work for the engineering think tank where he works. I suspect the later model Tektronix analog/digital oscilloscope and other electronics test gear in the shop was a legacy of that activity, and was fascinating to use when I was debugging my own amplifier project (with only general guidance from the gentlemen).

The Robinette directions are NOT step-by-step, but cover general order-of-build and start-up/troubleshooting. Perfect for someone with some adult guidance or a kit build or two under their belt. The wonderful thing about the Bassman Micro is that it IS a '59 Bassman (or JTM-45 with one cap swap), complete with negative feedback loop (fun to play with) and that wonderfully interactive tweed bass/mid/treble/presence tone stack, but with 10" loudspeaker (a Weber vintage with medium dope), is still lighter than a Champ, but about as loud.

Hesh the Mojo Tone kits are laid out really well too with wiring diagrams and step by step instructions that you check off as you go. The SM kits have always been more expensive but I think that's because they actually offer support, ie you can get on the phone with someone. Hopefully that has not changed.

I'm fortunate enough to have a world class amp repair guy in my town. So when I built my Marshall clone even though everything worked out well I took it to him to give it the once over. He made a few shielding improvements.

I recently finished building Rob Robinette's 6v6 version of the Blackvibe. I modified it a bit, adding a second preamp copied from Steve Luckey's amp based upon the Vox AC15. I built it into the cabinet and chassis of a 1959 Guild Masteramp that I acquired through a friend. It was a fun build and I'm really enjoying playing a little electric (previously an acoustic player exclusively). I highly recommend Rob Robinette's designs and web site. Very informative and the designs are very buildable. This was my first amp build and I have a feeling I'll be doing more of them.

Going back to the original post ...

I just had a shipment missing a item, I used the contact us service request and got a response within 48 hours with a good resolution. I miss the ability to call. Interesting enough I read an article yesterday that was about businesses fighting inflation, trying to keep prices down by reducing costs elsewhere. Moving away from staffed service lines was mentioned.