Alexi tells all...

[ChickenScratch]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Originally posted by Greg Crowe:
I told them, I told them, I F'ing told them!

I told the Fender guys about this WAY early on, before is became a big stink. They totally dropped the ball. Oh well ... this one will haunt them for years, kinda like when Dean Zelinsky told me about blowing off a phone call from somebody in LA he'd never heard of named Randy Rhoads.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's funny as all hell to me. If RR went Dean I might be playing them today. Hey, didnt Dead do a really cool version of the Soloist earlier this year, anybody have the pictures?

In any case, what happened with Alexi's a shame but it also comes through that he does have a commitment to Jackson and with a little effort we can get him back on board.

[ChickenScratch]

Re: Alexi tells all...

I was just over at ESP Japan's site again looking at Alexi's model. You know what, the black one is not to my liking but the white one's pretty cool.

Instead of having the black one as it is witht he huge yellow markings they should have just reveresed the color scheme already present on the white one. I find it really elegant.

[Inazone]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Originally posted by Greg Crowe:
Alexi DID have 2 custom orders and FMIC/Jackson cancelled both of them!... among other endorsee projects.

Hell, I even offered to lend Alexi a USA Jackson until he could get a new one.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm not saying FMIC didn't screw up in dealing with someone who clearly would be a key European endorsee, but again, it sounds like a case of unrealistic expectations on Alexi's part and a lot of questionable information from the Finnish shop who endorsed him.

While I'm not personally a COB fan, I count many European metal bands among my favorites, and I acknowledge that they are pretty obscure to the general guitar-playing public. It's sucks that his Jacksons got ripped off, and that his order got pulled, but is he such a big name rockstar that he couldn't play a production USA Jackson until his custom orders did get completed? Why did he not take you up on your generous offer, Greg?

I think back to all the glowing reviews I've read about Jackson customer service. I recall the many favorable comments about dealers like OSG, DCGL, GuitarXpress and many others that went the extra mile to make sure that their customers got exactly what they wanted, quickly and affordably. Surely, a well-known shredder in Europe could have had a fantastic guitar in his hands, probably within a week. Maybe not a 24-fret, single-hum Rhoads straight from the Custom Shop, but something to get him by. I hear about all the drama surrounding Alexi, and I can only think one thing: something stinks, and the smell is coming from a little shop in Helsinki.

[the_drip]

Re: Alexi tells all...

yes. It woudl be the shop that dropped the order for Alexi's guitars. Logically, they would have to, since fender dropped them as an importer of jackson guitars. how are they supposed to get him teh guitars made if Fender won't even ship any jacksons to them at all?

It's just a bad set of circumstances. Too bad, now...back to my question. How do you get ESP Japan guitars in the states? Could someplace like DCGL get a hold of one for you?

[Alexi7]

Re: Alexi tells all...

bro, those are alexi's words, no can of worms there. Jackson ****ed up bigtime, and keep ****ing up, what a pity, cause the guitars are great. [img]graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]

[ChickenScratch]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Originally posted by the_drip:
How do you get ESP Japan guitars in the states? Could someplace like DCGL get a hold of one for you?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good question, since yesterday I've been admiring the white ESP they made for Alexi.

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Originally posted by ChickenScratch:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by the_drip:
How do you get ESP Japan guitars in the states? Could someplace like DCGL get a hold of one for you?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good question, since yesterday I've been admiring the white ESP they made for Alexi. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why don't you call or email DCGL, or
ESP Japan for that matter, and ask? Newc
has bought a few guitars from Japan too, maybe he'd know.

I think faulting the guy for letting his gear get ripped is a bit harsh. If you've never been ripped off, you're not just vigilant, you're also lucky. I've been very vigilant that way, but also know I'm lucky. You can be distracted for 15 seconds and find your guitar gone.
The guitars disappeared from an after show party consisting of friends, at their rehearsal space. Not the most likely place you'd think to get ripped off from.

I wouldn't be surprised if the manager was for the ESP deal anyway, because it'd
be more lucrative than whatever Jackson did for 'em. Remember management gets a %age of ALL income of the client. Lets
say ESP paid Alexi $20,000.00 a year to play their guitars; that'd be $2,000.00 or maybe $3,000.00 per year for the manager depending on his cut, usually 10%
to 15%.

The only other Jackson Alexi could've used would be a 24-fret King V. The music requires a 24-fret neck, and a lot of stuff he plays up high, you'll find your left hand banging against the horn of a Soloist or Dinky trying to play with the correct hand position. Alexi's like what? 5 ft. 4" or something? A King V might be too big for him, so that really limits his choices. Jackson cancels his orders, and ignores him despite direct info from Greg Crowe, who was probably not the only one. Why could Jackson not have emailed Alexi at [email protected] the official contact address, if they were willing to help him with a JacksonStars 24-fret Rhoads until he could get something else? He thought he was already blown off by Jackson; why would he step up to let them diss him again? It was FMIC's place to tell him as their customer, "We've cancelled your orders through that shop because they're no longer Jackson distributors, but go to your Fender distributor who is now the Jackson dealer and replace your order."
Instead they told him nothing, while ESP was there offering what he needed, guitars to be ready in time for a tour that was 6 weeks away. It's easy for you
to critique the guy's choice months later and from a position where you aren't the one who just got his prized possessions stolen, but at the time there is NO doubt
AT ALL that FMIC was made aware, and knew
Alexi thought he'd been rejected by them.
It would take them as long to contact him as it did me to find the Sinergy website with a name search, and to read the contact email posted prominently there.
There were several big threads here about it, and Greg at least making FMIC aware
directly of the issue. I wouldn't blame a guitar shop in Finland who got their distributorship yanked without warning (kinda like OSG's case) for trying to get a big client to go with the line they're replacing Jackson with; I guess they should cut their throats and bleed out because FMIC dropped them? If it was YOUR shop, YOUR living, and you just got the shaft, what would YOU do? You'd not
advise them to chase the manufacturer that just stiffed you, I'm sure.

[Newc]

Re: Alexi tells all...

But in all logic it's not Fender's responsibility to contact every customer of every Jackson dealership and tell them to go to another dealer, it's the band manager's responsibility to find another dealer or establish a contact with the manufacturer about getting a replacement dealer and gear.
If it was an after-show party for "friends", then I'd seriously be looking for these friends to find out which one took my gear, stomp their ass, and then see 'em in court. Friends stop being friends when they steal your bread and butter, or when they know who stole your gear and don't tell you who did it out of loyalty to the friend who stole it.

As for getting Japanese-market guitars in the States, you'll have to find a civilian in Japan to buy one on your behalf. I had such a contact and sent him the money when he found one I wanted (JacksonStars NASL-160). I've tried contacting Ishibashi (www.ishibashi.co.jp) about some Jacksons listed in their used section, which is the same store chain my NASL came from, but have never heard anything from them.

Newc

[ September 01, 2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Newc ]

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi tells all...

True, but an endorsed artist (we can quibble semantics about the shop endorsing him, but Jackson listed (lists
him STILL!) as endorsed, so given the furor on the Internet wherein he'd already said they blew him off, which FMIC was made aware of, they could have made a move.

As for Alexi's manager, I wonder. I posted that suspicion above; ESP's better
for HIS wallet than Jackson, I'm sure.
I have suspected an inside job from the gate, BECAUSE it was supposedly all trusted friends around. The timing of the theft turned out pretty convenient,
didn't it? Anyway, I'd say Alexi was guilty of trusting a manager and music shop who it seemed did well for him up to this point; why wouldn't he trust them,
if they seemed to be looking out for him?

Oh well, it's done now; it'd just be interesting to know who took the guitars,
and why.

[Black Mariah]

Re: Alexi tells all...

So you're insinuating that Alexi's manager and guitar dealer put together a conspiracy to have Alexis guitars stolen at exactly the time Jackson was being acquired by Fender, thus ensuring that he would ink a deal with ESP that would bring them a grand total of maybe $40? Nah, that's too out there even for you. [img]graemlins/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/poke.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Seriously now, the situation with Alexi was this. J/C was being bought by Fender. At the same time, J/C's Euro distributor was going bankrupt. For a period of a couple of weeks, there was not a European Jackson distributor. Not J/C nor Fender or even AMIC was responsible for the f**ked up Alexi situation (is that like a Bonnie Situation?). European endorsees were handled by the Euro distributor. When they went *poof*, so did all the endorsers. Alexi, probably being *HIGHLY* misinformed and panicked due to not having any damn guitars to play, went with the quick and easy escape route. If his guitars hadn't been stolen, he'd probably be an official endorser by now. If J/C was able to handle the Euro endorsers he would have been an official endorser before this whole thing happened. As it sits, it's not the fault of anyone except Alexi and whatever idiot he got his info from that he's playing ESP.

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Hey man, it worked for Oliver Stone, okay? [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] Besides, in the wacky world of COB and Sinergy, NOTHING is too wacky to be dismissed as possible. In any case you'd have to say the manager is at the least incompetent, unless an ESP deal was to his benefit. Whether conspiracy or not, it seems that someone who knew the band pretty well must've been involved.
Whose job was it to lock up the rehearsal
space after everyone left? Start there with a cattle prod and an Aim 'n' Flame
and I bet you'd get answers before long!
Something is funny with that whole thing.

This is the first time anyone's said the Euro Jackson distributor went bankrupt.
All other accounts have been just that the distributorship was pulled from them abruptly. What's your source, and why haven't we heard this before? That seems
like a big item in FMIC's defense for nobody to have brought it up in the past
- what is it, almost a year now?

[Black Mariah]

Re: Alexi tells all...

It probably wasn't mentioned because it's fairly irrelevant. I'm not too sure on the timing of it either. I only heard they were bankrupt once, in passing, and I don't remember exactly when that was (which is to say I don't remember what WEEK, but it was close to my last day there at Jackson). They could have been preparing to declare bankruptcy, or it could have gone through already. But still, whether they were bankrupt or just had their distributorship yoinked isn't important. The thing you have to consider here is that the reason Laiho's custom order was thrown out was because the distributor over there simply didn't exist. I have no clue what happened there, but someone should have called Jackson and seen what was up. It doesn't sound like they did, and instead relied only on what their dealer was saying. Never a good move.

[Suck my kiss]

Re: Alexi tells all...

It has been brought up before. I think the topic was addressed being for euro JCFers so maybe you didn't check.

[Greg Crowe]

Re: Alexi tells all...

The distributor stuff is completely irrelevant.

When Fender first took over Jackson, Mc/D or whoever from Fender came on the board and asked what we wanted to see or what they needed to know. Myself and others made them perfectly clear of Alexi's situation with his stolen guitars and upcoming COB tour. Additionally, I was on the phone daily with FMIC mgmt(until DFW came in and f'd things up) and made them aware of the situation.

FMIC dropped the ball plain and simple.

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi tells all...

Originally posted by VoiceX3:
Greg, we all know of your feelings on this whole transition, but I'm sure there are all kinds of specifics that we are not aware of. Either way, Alexi is playing ESP now like it or not. What's done is done and I don't feel like getting into a pissing match with anyone about it. Dave Mustaine is my biggest influence being we have the same rhythm styles and we're both frontmen. Dave went to ESP for his reasons and I still and will always play Jacksons. This is a obviously a dead issue, so let's bury it.


Oh, yeah....... The guitars getting stolen, well, that's on the tech, management or Alexi himself.......I know I'd be vigilant about where they end up and that they be safe. I've got many guitars and I always know where they are and that they're safe, even so, you need to have more than 2 just in case something happens to them. You just can't expect the custom shop to drop everything and get yours done immediately. Not if you're Alexi or even if you were Randy Rhoads......Randy had to wait for his. Why should Alexi be any more special. Understand what I'm getting at?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It doesn't matter what we DON'T know, what we DO know from Greg's post and the posts themselves is that FMIC, including McD, knew the sitch and did nothing. Those are the RELEVANT facts, the rest is just CYA and finger-pointing.

The difference between Alexi and Randy is that Jackson Guitars didn't even exist until Grover decided to put his name on Randy's guitar. Also, Charvel Guitars as it was then known was not nearly as established or well-manned as today, so if there were only 3-4 workers then stopping for Randy could cost survival cashflow. I'm sure you're not going to suggest that FMIC would go belly-up to alter the schedule for Alexi. Also FMIC has the Japan factory that makes the 24-fret Rhoads that would have certainly sufficed
with a couple of mods until he could get a new custom shop model made. This is something FMIC would know that Alexi would really have no way of knowing. Whatever their dealer turf issues are, they own the place and could circumvent them since
it was an emergency for the guy. These are all known facts, so whatever we don't know really doesn't matter.

I also think it's odd that when a forum member posts about getting ripped off you guys have sympathy, but in this case you're anxious to blame the victim. You know, gear gets ripped off every day and the victims are not idiots. Just because
it hasn't happened to you YET, don't be smug. It can happen to you.

[ September 02, 2003, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: lerxstcat ]