IBANEZ SUPPLY PROBLEM

[DAVID WARD]

Interested to know how many others experienced any of this. My beloved 3 year old SR370E SN just stopped working in November and the first shock is that ALL the electronics need replacing - what even the pots ? Second shock is that was 4 months ago and the parts still haven't arrived from Japan. IBANEZ UK said they would help but haven't so far. So frustrating, although the only good thing to come out of it is that, in desperation, I bought a Glarry Jazz bass for £80 and I just love it

[PaulThePlug]

There is a post on the Ibby Owners Thread of a pre going duff on an old SR600...

They ended swapping the pickups and going passive.

Hope Ibanez get ya sorted... i think the pre n pots etc comes as a 'part'

The SR300 Humbuckers can be run passive maybe without the power tap bit, and different wiring for the coil tap... would be an option.

Edited May 3, 2021 by PaulThePlug

[LeftyJ]

14 hours ago, PaulThePlug said:

i think the pre n pots etc comes as a 'part'

Probably this. There's no way all the pots can be broken at once. Here is a parts list of all the various Ibanez preamps, and they're all pre-wired with pots and everything:

https://www.meinlshop.de/en/ibanez/spare-parts/e-basses/equalizer?p=1 

[Marvin]

Ibanez, in my experience, are a right royal pain in the A when it comes to getting spares. A few years back all I wanted was a battery compartment, as mine had snapped on my SR300. It took 5 months. 

My old SR300 started having issues with the tone/eq and pots. I tried Ibanez for parts, no joy. Look at alternatives. The alternatives were incredibly expensive. My SR300 pups worked in passive so I  asked @KiOgon to make a passive wiring loom. I had 2 vol, 2 tone and one of the tone knobs was push/pull to go from series to parallel. It was brilliant.

Just keep badgering Ibanez.

[Woodinblack]

Yep, its the way it has always been for some reason.

[Guest]

Just don’t bother asking for any hardware on discontinued basses, even if it’s in their Japanese catalog. I tried when I had an SR3006E, headstock weren’t interested and pointed me to a parts supplier who could apparently request such stuff from Ibanez. It turned out to be a one man band who was “busy”, sent one reply and then ignored me afterward. I gave up after 6 months. 

[Woodinblack]

25 minutes ago, FDC484950 said:

Just don’t bother asking for any hardware on discontinued basses, even if it’s in their Japanese catalog. I tried when I had an SR3006E, headstock weren’t interested and pointed me to a parts supplier who could apparently request such stuff from Ibanez. It turned out to be a one man band who was “busy”, sent one reply and then ignored me afterward. I gave up after 6 months. 

I think I had exactly the same experience with the same guy trying to get a control for the SR1000 (from 2006). Got one from ebay in the end, having said that, even that has gone bad now, these parts are a bit rubbish, but unfortunately where else are you going to get a concentric dual 100k log and 20k lin pot?

[BigRedX]

18 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Yep, its the way it has always been for some reason.

Not in the late 70s when Ibanez first started producing "original" designs for export sale. I was building my own guitar at the time and a large proportion of the hardware was Ibanez spare parts, as they were easy to get hold of, excellent quality and very good value for money.

It's a pity that no longer seems to be the situation.

Regarding having to replace the whole pre-amp, I suspect that from a service PoV it will be easier to swap out the entire loom than fiddling about with lots of extra soldering and working out exactly which components have failed.

[Al Krow]

Maybe worth trying ordering via Wunjos in London? They're a leading Ibby retailer in the UK and Tom (manager) is super helpful.

[skej21]

On 05/05/2021 at 12:42, Al Krow said:

Maybe worth trying ordering via Wunjos in London? They're a leading Ibby retailer in the UK and Tom (manager) is super helpful.

Only problem there is that you’d just push your problem to a nice guy. Headstock distribution who supply Ibanez in the UK are about as efficient as a chocolate fireguard, so you’re not going to get any better results going through a retailer (having worked for one of the UK’s largest music retailers, I know that first hand!). Absolute waste of time dealing with them at all IME and is genuinely the only negative thing about Ibanez in the UK. The products themselves are actually quite good value but no support security if anything goes wrong. We had a customer who bought an SR1605 and it had a defect and they couldn’t even replace it like for like (he ended up with an SR1805 instead!)

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, skej21 said:

Only problem there is that you’d just push your problem to a nice guy. Headstock distribution who supply Ibanez in the UK are about as efficient as a chocolate fireguard, so you’re not going to get any better results going through a retailer (having worked for one of the UK’s largest music retailers, I know that first hand!). 

I think (and I am not sure as it isn't clear) that ibanez UK replaced the neck of my EHB1505 when it broke. Hard to tell, noone admitted it or even mentioned it was fixed.

[DAVID WARD]

Thanks for the helpful feedback guys. I doubt I can do much about it but at least I now feel I am not alone