(READ IF YOU HAVE A) Fender '61 Flea Bass (Woes)

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

17 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

A known issue?

Why the heck are they dragging their undercarriage then?  As a working musician you could be at a serious loss due to the delay.  In engineering, for example,  tool makers like Snap-On have a no-quibble lifetime guarantee on their tools.  If you present them with a broken one, they replace it immediately and then look at the causes of failure for product development to see how the tool can be improved.  The mechanic can carry on working and everyone benefits.

With a known issue there is no reasonable excuse for holding you up.  What a bunch of mother-fenders!

Part of the reason for their half heartedness in my case may have to do with the fact that I disclosed to them that I had the neck replaced by Rob Green at Status almost immediately so that I could continue using it. In hindsight, that probably wasn't a great move on my part. That said, I've only just found this out some five months down the line. They also seem to be sticking quite rigidly to the "it's over a year, so it's out of warranty' approach. I questioned whether Fender basses are supposed to last longer than 12 months. Ignored. Apparently they're doing me a favour and as a good will gesture have offered me a box of strings. Woo hoo! Go me 🙄

Edited March 7, 2019 by hiram.k.hackenbacker

[Cato]

That's disappointing.

I'd expect a company as big and as iconic as Fender to do a lot better in terms of customer service.

[Linus27]

12 minutes ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Part of the reason for their half heartedness in my case may have to do with the fact that I disclosed to them that I had the neck replaced by Rob Green at Status almost immediately so that I could continue using it. In hindsight, that probably wasn't a great move on my part. That said, I've only just found this out some five months down the line. They also seem to be sticking quite rigidly to the "it's over a year, so it's out of warranty' approach. I questioned whether Fender basses are supposed to last longer than 12 months. Ignored. Apparently they're doing me a favour and as a good will gesture have offered me a box of strings. Woo hoo! Go me 🙄

Go viral if they dont play ball. Obviously let them know but Basschat, Talkbass and Facebook are strong tools for this. Very disappointing the way they are treating you. Let Flea know as well, he'll probably send you a whole new bass 😁

[SpondonBassed]

35 minutes ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Apparently they're doing me a favour and as a good will gesture have offered me a box of strings.

More spin than a politician, slightly less spin than a quasar.

[Stub Mandrel]

Interesting.

This is always going to be challenging as it is easy for a ham-fisted person to keep tightening a truss rod and strip the thread, then how do you prove it's a manufacturing fault not user error?

As you are clearly not a clueless beginner and tehre's a known fault with these guitars, I have a theory: the truss rods haven't been threaded for a long enough distance so you simply run out of adjustment. In running past the end of the thread, the nut strips.

It's likely the upper parts of the thread are still fine. If you still had the neck, I would recommend seeing if you could still wind the nut right off, get a new nut and use it with a spacer 6-10mm long on the still intact end of the thread.

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Part of the reason for their half heartedness in my case may have to do with the fact that I disclosed to them that I had the neck replaced by Rob Green at Status almost immediately so that I could continue using it.

That is totally irrelevant, the fact you had to shell out to replace their defect makes it worse.

1 hour ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

They also seem to be sticking quite rigidly to the "it's over a year, so it's out of warranty' approach. I questioned whether Fender basses are supposed to last longer than 12 months. Ignored. Apparently they're doing me a favour and as a good will gesture have offered me a box of strings. Woo hoo! Go me 🙄

Unfortunately at that point, having been in similar places, you have to turn into a bit of an a*se to get stuff done. Fender are very big on social media with their 'fender play' adverts and the like on twitter and facebook. On all of those adverts you see like that, reply to the post with 'How can I play this as my 2 year old £900 fender flea bass neck warped and it appears they aren't expected to last over a year' and similar. And on their page, comment on any post where people ask about their basses with things like 'Be careful, the necks are only supposed to last a year until they break' and the like.

do that and you will find that their response speeds up drastically. For some reason (and I think it is a shame), customer service of many modern companies is entirely driven by their social media profile, the person who waits and shows them respect appears to get nothing.

I hate doing it, but it works very well.

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

1 hour ago, Linus27 said:

Let Flea know as well, he'll probably send you a whole new bass 😁

One of those Artist Series would be very nice 😀

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, Linus27 said:

 Let Flea know as well, he'll probably send you a whole new bass 😁

Might as well, he got his free!

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

3 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

That is totally irrelevant, the fact you had to shell out to replace their defect makes it worse.

Unfortunately at that point, having been in similar places, you have to turn into a bit of an a*se to get stuff done. Fender are very big on social media with their 'fender play' adverts and the like on twitter and facebook. On all of those adverts you see like that, reply to the post with 'How can I play this as my 2 year old £900 fender flea bass neck warped and it appears they aren't expected to last over a year' and similar. And on their page, comment on any post where people ask about their basses with things like 'Be careful, the necks are only supposed to last a year until they break' and the like.

do that and you will find that their response speeds up drastically. For some reason (and I think it is a shame), customer service of many modern companies is entirely driven by their social media profile, the person who waits and shows them respect appears to get nothing.

I hate doing it, but it works very well.

Mmm. I'll sleep on it. It's not the sort of thing I would normally do tbh. I thought twice about posting the update on here, but thought it only fair should another '61 Flea owner suffer the same issue.

Edited March 7, 2019 by hiram.k.hackenbacker

[ezbass]

6 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I have a theory: the truss rods haven't been threaded for a long enough distance so you simply run out of adjustment. In running past the end of the thread, the nut strips.

I have experience of this with Fender. I had a truss rod that ran out adjustment on a Roscoe Beck signature. I had to add a washer to give me the required adjustment. Fortunately, I only needed an extra quarter to half turn, so it was a simple modification.

[onehandclapping]

I have owned 3 custom shop jazz basses 1960 and 2x1964 everyone of them needed washers,and that is with TI flats,the AVRI 62 jazz I have does not

Edited March 8, 2019 by onehandclapping
forgot to add brand of string

[CameronJ]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

That is totally irrelevant, the fact you had to shell out to replace their defect makes it worse.

Unfortunately at that point, having been in similar places, you have to turn into a bit of an a*se to get stuff done. Fender are very big on social media with their 'fender play' adverts and the like on twitter and facebook. On all of those adverts you see like that, reply to the post with 'How can I play this as my 2 year old £900 fender flea bass neck warped and it appears they aren't expected to last over a year' and similar. And on their page, comment on any post where people ask about their basses with things like 'Be careful, the necks are only supposed to last a year until they break' and the like.

do that and you will find that their response speeds up drastically. For some reason (and I think it is a shame), customer service of many modern companies is entirely driven by their social media profile, the person who waits and shows them respect appears to get nothing.

I hate doing it, but it works very well.

It’s a strong +1 from me.

[drTStingray]

3 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

UPDATE:

I still have not received the replacement neck from Fender. I think they may be growing the trees it will be made from. I’ve had to enquire a few times for updates and one of the most recent communications indicated that there was a ‘known issue’ with the necks on these basses.

Quote:

‘The known issue seemed to affect only a small batch of Flea Bass necks that for some reason were failing in terms of twisting and bowing with the trussrod unable to offer any relief at all.’

I bought mine from what I believe to be the initial run that was shipped to the UK. This is probably worth noting if you bought or own one from the same batch. I’m happy to forward you the e-mail from Fender if you have any ‘out of warranty’ issues like I’ve had.

This is awful.

It appears that Fender's customer services, rather like the design of its iconic instruments, live somewhere far in the past.  

Many companies (which have a far better reputation for their customer focus) would have dealt with this issue when it arose. It speaks volumes for Fender unfortunately - but I have heard other people describe their resolution of issues as dreadful.  What a bunch of tw**s. 

Have you thought of starting a civil action to get the bass replaced? I would have thought the goods could be deemed as not fit for purpose. 

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

I don’t do Twitter very well. I tried to find the account for Andy Mooney, the Fender CEO, and failed. 

I almost gave up, then found the feed for Flea, so I tagged him in instead 😀.

‘Here’s a question for @flea333 - how long is the neck on a Fender ‘61 Flea Bass supposed to last? Answer: 12 months according to @FenderGBI. Neck on mine went & 5 months down the line I’m still waiting. It’s a known issue with your Sig Model. Thought ‘You Oughta Know’.’

[dannybuoy]

Something is quite clearly not right when you might find a straighter neck on an actual '61 Jazz.

[White Cloud]

25 minutes ago, dannybuoy said:

Something is quite clearly not right when you might find a straighter neck on an actual '61 Jazz.

This is all a bit of a downer for the OP, I hope Fender get their finger out and sort this matter to his satisfaction. There's nothing worse than a nice instrument developing a neck failure. I bought an expensive Jaydee Supernatural brand new back in the 80's in a vain bid to become Mark King - a few months later the neck had developed the sort of extreme and irreparable  back bow that would have made Robin Hood proud! 

Apparantly JD had purchased a batch of 'rogue' Mahogany (why build instruments from it then? ... just saying!)

I have a Fender Flea. Thankfully the neck is perfect, has only required a gentle tweak ... and adjusted perfectly.

[Chris2112]

20 minutes ago, White Cloud said:

 

Apparantly JD had purchased a batch of 'rogue' Mahogany (why build instruments from it then? ... just saying!)

This may be something that they only found out about later - like after they'd built a load of basses only to find out they'd all warped and twisted after being shipped! Though it would suggest to me the wood wasn't properly dry and stable. Even a top builder can fall foul of bad materials.

[BassApprentice]

Rubbish situation all over by the looks of it.

Tweets always do better with engagement so if we could all like/retweet the OPs tweet it might gain some traction 

 

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

22 minutes ago, BassApprentice said:

Rubbish situation all over by the looks of it.

Tweets always do better with engagement so if we could all like/retweet the OPs tweet it might gain some traction 

 

Thanks.I would probably of thought of that if I wasn’t so unbelievably crap at Twitter.. I had to get my bleary eyed son to help me with that at 6am this morning.

[Stub Mandrel]

Ask Fender for the old neck back.

It's your property.

[police squad]

@hiram.k.hackenbacker

 

could you forward that email to me please as I have one of the first batch of F;ea sigs too (although it's seems to be fine)

I had a Trussrod failure on a WHUFC Steve Harris bass but that was in warranty and was replaced with no problem

[dmccombe7]

Seems to be a fair bit of Fender truss rod failures getting mentioned. I like my Fenders but its a bit worrying to hear of this.

Dave

[nightsun]

If it's a known problem wouldn't it be nice if Fender released the batch serial numbers......

[4000]

I bought a new Fender Roadworn Jazz a little while after they came out. When I got it home I tried to straighten the neck only to find the trussrod was maxed out. Thankfully Dawson's (big up for Andy) were extremely helpful and replaced the neck immediately and without fuss. Sold it a short while after though.

[miles'tone]

2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Ask Fender for the old neck back.

It's your property.

If they don't send you a replacement definitely ask for your old one back. Otherwise you will have paid full price for only a body with a side dish of loads of hassle!