Shout out to Kush Audio for good customer service.

[jim1960]

I alluded to an issue I was having with a piece of hardware in another thread. The problem has been resolved so I can tell the story now.

Last April I bought a B-Stock Kush Clariphonic MS. The Clariphonic is a wonderful bit of kit that can make certain tracks shine like nothing else I own.

A little while back the Clariphonic started exhibiting an issue. Any stereo signal that passed through it was coming out uneven. There was about a 6db difference between the right and left channels.

There were lots of possibilities at which to point the finger of blame: the patchbay, patch cables, D-sub cables, the 4 channel snake on the Clariphonic, etc. I moved the cables to another place on the patchbay, same problem. I tried a different 4-channel snake, same problem. I tried reversing just one side of the snake, the problem reversed itself and side that was weak was now hot.

I contacted Kush. They guarantee all their gear for life ...even the B-stock. As I described the problem, they said that if it was their box causing it, it's the first time it's ever happened. We went back and forth few times and I didn't a bunch of tests that they requested. I even brought it over to a friend's studio and the same problem showed up there when w routed it through his patchbay. They said I should send them the box.

I sent the box in for repair. It came back to me about 10 days later with a clean bill of health. I put it into my system and ugh! ...the same problem was still there. I wasn't happy about that and the email I sent off reflected that in no uncertain way. They assured me they'd tested it and it worked perfectly.

They asked me to hook the Clariphonic directly to my Apollo X8p without a patchbay or anything in between. Because of my setup, I couldn't do that but a friend offered to let me do a direct hookup in his studio to his AVID system. This was the same friend who let me test it there previously and it didn't work correctly. But this time, hooking it up directly worked.

Weird. It made it seem the patchbay or the cables were to blame but I switched those around enough to rule that out.

During the time the Clariphonic was being repaired, the used Rosetta 800 that I bought on Reverb arrived and I integrated the 800 into my system. I had a thought. Just for poops and giggles, I ran the Clariphonic through the Rosetta 800 instead of my Apollo. It worked normally.

This was nuts. Now it looked like the Apollo could be the problem but I wasn't entirely sold on that idea because I was able to duplicate the problem at my friend's studio when I went through his patchbay. So now we're kinda stuck and don't really know for sure where the issue is. I suggested that if Kush wanted to loan me another Clariphonic for a couple of days, we could see if the same problem showed up on a different unit. They did me one better and swapped me out for a new one. It arrived at the end of last week but today was the first day I had the time to hook it up and test it. It worked perfectly. The other unit had developed some kind of gremlin that only showed up under particular conditions. I believe Kush when they say they tested it and it worked fine because it worked fine when I hooked it up directly in my friend's system, and it worked fine when I patched it through the Rosetta. But for some reason, it didn't like to be patched through my Apollo. Just really weird and frustrating for both sides. But Kush got me solid in the end and I'm pretty happy with how they handled it. So kudos to Kush.

[jim1960]

Today I got an unexpected bonus from Kush. Because of the time and hassle that was involved in troubleshooting the problem with my Clariphonic, they're throwing me a free plugin of my choosing. That's an integrity move on their part.