CA Guitars will Peavey provide service?

[frankencat]

If needed, will Peavey provide service on these? I just bought a pre-Peavey Composite Acoustics GX Performer. Just curious.

[mchalebk]

I don't believe that Peavey will do any warranty work on pre-Peavey CA guitars. They might perform some service on them, though. However, not sure what you would need done that couldn't be handled by guitar techs at most music stores.

[frankencat]

Just curious really. Thanks.

[AndyFrank]

I was told no. The Pevey guy monitors this forum perhaps he will chime in.

[tbeltrans]

I always found it ironic that a guitar that was touted as never needing work and being impervious to the environment would need a warranty. It seems to me to be similar to planning a funeral for an immortal being. I suppose it was mostly marketing, but I found it all amusing at the time. I could see the value of the warranty for some manufacturing defect, but if the instrument was correctly built as delivered, there probably is little need for a warranty anyway, though I suppose some problems such as finish issues may not show up for some time. Irony aside, I would be pleasantly surprised if Peavey were to honor any pre-Peavey warranty because I don't see any reason that they would have that responsibility.
Fortunately, my Cargos have not needed such attention. We wiill see how they fare over the ensuing years.

Tony

[AndyFrank]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

I always found it ironic that a guitar that was touted as never needing work and being impervious to the environment would need a warranty. It seems to me to be similar to planning a funeral for an immortal being.

Good point Tony, and all the more reason to wonder why Pevey decided not to honor the warranty on CA's built by the original company. That, combined with all the negative stuff posted by their guy about things that "needed" to be redesigned, design problems none of us pre Pevey CA owners noticed by the way, makes me wonder if Pevey had any respect for the original CA's at all.

On a happier note, the Rainsong parlor sitting in my lap as I type this lets me know that carbon fiber guitars are here to stay. Good job Rainsong!

[mchalebk]

It really would not have made sense for Peavey to cover warranty work on guitars they did not produce. While they would have engendered some positive press, it undoubtedly would have cost them money. Can anyone provide examples of any company buying out another company in bankruptcy and covering warranty work on the first company's products?

As far as Peavey making negative statements about CA and whether they have respect for CA, I think these are unfair conclusions to draw. Peavey did not bad mouth CA or make lots of claims about how bad they built guitars and how much better Peavey will build them. They acknowledged that some CA guitars had issues. This isn't an opinion, some certainly did have issues. However, Fred Poole went out of his way many times to talk about how much they liked/loved CA guitars, while also explaining why it was taking Peavey so long to get production up to speed.

This isn't the first time I've felt it necessary to defend Peavey when it comes to CA guitars. I went back to some earlier posts and found the following quotes from Fred Poole from the MacNichol forum...

Noticed some concern on here regarding some of the old CA guitars...I noticed one person had it right. The old CA guitars were great guitars, that is why we were interested in the company to begin with! The biggest issues was how they were made, and the repeatability of the design for manufacturing to higher QC standards. What we are really talking about is that last 2%, and from where I stand that is what separates a good guitar from a great guitar.

The "issue" regarding the top under the fretboard is slightly exagerated. With guitars that have passed QC and are in the world this will not be an issue. However, as you are aware the fretboard transitions from a solid CF neck to much thinner top. We felt that it was important to ensure the stability of the transition between the two pieces during manufacturing. This will allow tighter QC tolerances with regard to action and will help prevent any linear deviation in fretboard/top placement.

After we built a machine (building these machines take time) to test and verify the strength of our neck we discovered that indeed there was more potential deflection that we think is desirable (again we are talking thousandth here). We are now using a potentially patentable process to reinforce the neck and neck body joint. This has already been completed and verified and will result in improved stability during manufacturing and improved playability up the neck.

Reinforced neck and neck joint - This is an interesting point I remember talking to a customer at a trade show and he was telling me that his neck was moving (old CA) and I told him that shouldn't be the case...well I was wrong. We built a machine to test the strength of the neck and guess what - he was right it - one that we tested moved .020, which is a lot. With the new reinforcement it hardly moves at all something like .002 and this is with 200 pounds of vertical pressure on the neck (much more than the horizontal pull of the strings).

Now keep in mind CA designed the neck to move some...that is how they got the proper relief, if your CA plays great right now - it will stay that way, so don't worry.

Improved neck angle - We added a 1% angle (its actually in the fingerboard) in order to achieve consistent action and string break over the saddle.

But for you existing CA owners - If your guitar plays and feels good - there is NOTHING wrong with it, it is a fantastic instrument, be proud to be a member of our community.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by AndyFrank

Good point Tony, and all the more reason to wonder why Pevey decided not to honor the warranty on CA's built by the original company. That, combined with all the negative stuff posted by their guy about things that "needed" to be redesigned, design problems none of us pre Pevey CA owners noticed by the way, makes me wonder if Pevey had any respect for the original CA's at all.

On a happier note, the Rainsong parlor sitting in my lap as I type this lets me know that carbon fiber guitars are here to stay. Good job Rainsong!

To be clear about my comment about CF guitars being impervious to the elements, etc...

I was talking about CF guitars in general because that is one of the first things that comes up in favor of these instruments. My comments said nothing about Peavey or CA Guitars before or after the Peavey acquisition. I have not seen the Peavey instruments, so I can't comment on them, but indications here in the forum are that they have achieved consistency in the manufacturing process. My understanding of the issues cited with pre-Peavey CA Guitars is that there was some problem with manufacturing consistency, rather than that these instruments were all sub-par. I can believe that, especially since CA Guitars had both financial issues and trouble keeing up with demand. Two things that can bring a business down are having not enough orders to bring in revenue and having too many orders so that the company can't keep up. Usually in the latter case, unit-to-unit consistency quality will suffer.

With regard to what Fred Poole might or might not have said, my take is that there were things he posted that were taken out of context. When I read his posts, I did not take away anything about CA Guitars being sub-par, but instead that there were manufacturing consistency issues. We all knew about this over at the original MacNichol forums when the original CA Guitars company was in full swing. I remember commenting in threads about this, how fortunate I felt buying all three of my Cargos from The Podium, because they checked the instruments out before selling them to customers. I know they sent instruments back to CA Guitars that were problematic. So, in all fairness, Fred Poole said nothing about the original CA Guitars company that we did not know already. If Peavey thought that CA Guitars did not have a good product ,they most likely would not have acquired them. There is a process that occurs prior to an acquisition called "due diligence", in which the acquiring company makes sure they are getting what they think they should be getting in the acquisition. They must have decided that the product line was good and that they could improve on an already good thing. Otherwise, they would be knowingly throwing lots of money away, which really doesn't make sense to me.

By the way, all pre-Peavey instruments really do suck - "big time", especially the Cargos. I will do you all a big favor -send them to me and I will take care of properly disposing of them. I don't hug trees, but I will certainly play these forsaken instrments.

Tony