Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *&#%$@

[Venomous]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

Even though Genebaby has legit concerns , and every one has the right to bitch. I think his point of not being satisfied with the guitar and the "repairs" to fix the issiues it had have beed made. I think this thread should be locked and deleted and put behind us.
After reading Lee's version of what happened i might consider buying a GMW someday in the future.
Like the Extreme album was titled "3 Sides To Every Story" Yours - Mine - And The Thruth. (not saying anyone involved is lying)

Now please Sully get rid of this

[Jack Napalm]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

Locking and or deleting a thread like this is what gives the admins a bad name. Not a good idea.

Every one stay calm and relax. Gene has a legitimate gripe. Maybe it's not all warranted but some of it is.

[Badseed]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

agreed

[Venomous]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

i kinda agree that some people might not like the locking or deleting and they might get a bad name by doing it.
So maybe we need a seperate section for gripes, complaints or whatever (or do we already??). Or maybe he could just have a sig like you do but about GMW.

[Chrisb]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

And more importantly potential GMW buyers deserve to know what they could be getting into. If I was an admin I would sticky this. Its important info to potential GMW buyers. Then again this isn't a GMW forum. Either way definitely it should not be locked or deleted.

[Joe_Steeler]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

What a fucking Greek tragedy... I just spent 25 minutes reading this thing and I am exhausted.
Vic, I do think you got slightly shafted and Lee comes through as a bit of an ass. The net result= No winners here.

I do not believe I will be ordering anyhting from Lee.

I had a bit of a bitter experience with the Fender CS at one time over a Masterbuilt instrument. Their swift response was literally "This is what we think is wrong with your guitar... this are the avenues to solve the problem... what do you want us to?" I chose a new freshly painted body (i.e. the most time consuming expensive option for them.

The CS manager (Alex Nicholas) and the Master builder (D. Galuszka) got on the phone and told me "ok, no problem and BTW since we are cutting a new body for you do you want us to throw some extra features there?" I was floored.

When the axe was done their overnighted the guitar from Corona to Florida with FEDEX home Saturday delivery.
First class all the way.

If Lee run that shop while going through PMS that is bad news.

[jgcable]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

How about some of us do some research and find out if fretboard veneers are common and acceptable. Maybe alot of manufacturers do this on bound fretboards. After all.. how many of us have actually torn our fretboards off or bindings to check? I never have. I would think we would have heard of this practice but you never know.

[~K~]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

[ QUOTE ]
So maybe we need a seperate section for gripes, complaints or whatever (or do we already??).

[/ QUOTE ]

We do, it's called the feedback section ..

[monte]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

Vic
Did you ever consider trying to sell the guitar (with full disclosure, of course) and start over again? I know you have spent alot of years waiting to get this guitar and for it to play as it should.

Maybe you are better off getting rid of it at this point and have your luthier make you another to your specs. At least you can recoup some of your money.

That is just a thought. I might help you to end the situation you are in and you can move on and focus having a new baby soon.
Monte

[hippietim]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

At first glance i was pretty shocked by the veneer. But the more I thought about it, the veneer might not be such a big deal. Seriously, my parents had old furniture with veneers on it that has lasted 30 or more years and that furniture was treated way rougher than a fingerboard is going to be - spills, bangs, sitting in the garage all winter, etc.

For me it comes down a question I don't think we'll ever get an answer to - was Vic entitled to any warranty work at all to begin with?

Reading Lee's response would indicate no to me - you don't call up the builder many months after taking delivery and tell him he has to fix something that was there since day one but never reported it and "by the way I had someone here mess with it first".

Vic seems to say that he did contact Lee and that he'd rather not have to ship the guitar so he tried to take care of it locally at first.

In recent memory, I've gotten two guitars that had issues that I could have actually corrected myself. However, they were brand new guitars so I decided to just follow the manufacturer's service policy and take them to authorized service centers. It worked out great. Had I done the work myself or taken them elsewhere and things were not corrected, I would not be surprised to have a manufacturer tell me I was on my own.

I'm not siding with Vic or Lee here. I suspect that there is a bit of lameness on both sides born out of miscommunication and frustration.

[Snoogans]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

[ QUOTE ]
How about some of us do some research and find out if fretboard veneers are common and acceptable. Maybe alot of manufacturers do this on bound fretboards. After all.. how many of us have actually torn our fretboards off or bindings to check? I never have. I would think we would have heard of this practice but you never know.

[/ QUOTE ]

If other manufacturers do put new veneers over dodgy fretboards, do they go to the trouble of making the new fret slots line up with the old ones?
Also, what is Neal Moser's take on this practice?

[jgcable]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

Who knows. Maybe we will find out that fretboard veneers are common place and perfectly acceptable in situations like this and that we all unintentionally joined a witch hunt which would suck for us.

[SEEGERMANY]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

But John, it's so much easier to crucify someone prior to doing some investigation. We can't have that!

[Shawn Lutz]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

I agree with just about everything Alex has said.

Just as people say Lee can be difficult to deal with (most never dealt with him nor own a GMW or really planned on ordering a GMW anyway [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) perhaps Vic is as well, maybe it was a clash of personalities that lead Lee to take a shortcut with the lam to stick you, I don't know. I do know he probablly could have said the warranty was voided by having someone locally doing work on it.

As far as those who say they'll never order a guitar from Lee. If an eBay seller had 5000 feedbacks for high dollar items and had a %99.6 feedback rating would you not buy from them? There certainly are more sastisfied GMW customers that there are unhappy ones. No it doesn't make this situation right but I'm just putting things into perspective. I would have been unhappy as you are Vic but I would have dealt with it in a different manner than you.

[sully]

Re: Lee Garver is an unethical piece of *?%$@

[ QUOTE ]
To those who build guitars out there:

1) I don't know the answer to this, but is it the case that the lam fretboard would certainly cause the frets to be unstable? It seems as though from the photos that the frets only go down to the bottom of the lam top anyways. Also it seems to me that if I were to drop a T shaped object into a slot that fit it properly (as the photo seems to indicate) that T shouldn't move side to side, and would not fall out if glued properly.

I'm looking at guys like Sully for the answer to this. People who have actually built guitars and done some serious fretwork. And pardon my ignorance if I am dead wrong on this. If I am, I will eat my words.

[/ QUOTE ]

imo, yes. putting frets into a thin veneer could potentially be unstable. i don't doubt that it's done by companies, though. with the way that wood expands and contracts, i would expect a fretboard like that to have problems. if you think about it, after the sharks were put in, there's hardly any wood in spots to hold those frets in and to keep them stable. we can see in the pictures that the frets seem to sit only in the veneer; there's not a lot of wood to hold those guys in place, and that can't be a good thing. if the fret tangs actually sat in the meat of the wood, they may have held better because there's more meat and mass for the tangs to bite into.

having to level the frets so much in areas that they're almost gone isn't the greatest either, but it's a way to work around a less than flat foundation. you can do that kinda thing on a guitar with a twisted neck to get a little more mileage out of it before you go ahead and plane the thing and put a new fretboard on it.

that said, lee has years more experience than i'll ever have with this kinda thing. in this situation, the plane/veneer thing didn't work; the compensated fret levelling that had to be done would be a sign of that.

i don't doubt for a second that curt, alex, and jon played it and it was fine at the time. but send it overseas through the temperature and climate changes, and that little veneer may have moved. hell, kev regularly has to do fretwork on his guitars when the climate shifts and the neck contracts, giving temporary sharp fret edges.

anyway, that's my .02 in regards to your question.