Fractal Talk

FractalAudio said:
I'm going to go throw some chairs around the office tomorrow and make sure this is made right.

I already fired a tech a couple weeks ago for similar incompetence. I don't take this sort of stuff lightly.
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Hey Cliff, I appreciate the reply very much, but please don't take it out on them unless there's strong evidence of incompetence with their work on your end. Especially not around the holidays.

The issue before I sent it in was highly intermittent -- it went 4 or 5 days after the first issues without a hiccup, after being powered for many hours. Then the next week, it started to exhibit the issues randomly again, and by the time I sent it in, it had gotten so bad that I wasn't sure it was ever going to boot again. But the morning I sent it back, it booted up completely normally right before I boxed it up! I thought nobody would believe me if I hadn't recorded the videos of it.

Anyway, I'm sure it'll all get worked out. I'm not angry, and I'd hate for someone to lose a job so close the holidays over my FM9. I could totally believe that the issues the tech saw went away completely after the work they did, only to reappear after it was shipped, because I saw essentially the same thing happen when it was still in my hands. :)

Edit: also, I want to add that I doubt the noise I hear of something tiny & loose inside has anything to do with the issues. It's behaving a lot like it did before I sent it in, and it had no loose noises before that. If they re-seated the connectors and had to remove the original glue staking, maybe the noise is just a fleck of that glue that got loose. Not sure -- I'll send it back without touching it and you can see what it is.
 
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this is the One thing about TGF no matter the subject or how serious it always turns into a laugh fest

Happy Cracking Up GIF by Regal
 
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SwirlyMaple said:
Well, I got my FM9 back from RMA this morning. Box looked great; no damage at all. As soon as I took it out of the bag, I noticed the sound of something very tiny falling from end to end inside it.

Then I plugged it in, and it appeared to boot normally to the presets screen. I pushed the "Page >" button once, and the screen immediately went black, and the tempo LED went out again, just like it was doing before. The top 3 scribble strips aren't lighting up at all either.

I'm not too happy. :( I just emailed them again, and thankfully I had the forethought to record video of all of this stuff as it was happening, but I politely but firmly insisted they send me a brand new one before Thanksgiving. I offered to pay Next Day Air out of my pocket again, because I am stupid with my money.

I'm sure they'll take care of it, but sadly my first experience with Fractal gear has been a major fail. I bought this unit 10/19, and I've only gotten to use it for a couple weeks. On the bright side, I loved everything else about it. Tones are killer. Just wish I actually had one I could use and trust! :facepalm
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Sadly, shipping companies go from “IDGAF” to “I REALLY DGAF” this time of year.

This is no doubt a result of the box being dropped or thrown. So try not to let that ruin your first impressions of Fractal products.
 
norminal said:
Sadly, shipping companies go from “IDGAF” to “I REALLY DGAF” this time of year.

This is no doubt a result of the box being dropped or thrown. So try not to let that ruin your first impressions of Fractal products.
Click to expand...

This x100. When I bought my SLO about 3-4 years ago, it was around this time of year when they hire seasonal drivers. I was keeping an eye for the delivery truck when this pickup pulls up across the street. To my horror I see a Soldano box in the back of his bed. The thing is propped up on its side upside down floating around the truck with a bunch of other random victims packages. I could have defeated Usain Bolt getting out to that truck. I crawled into his truck bed to retrieve It. :ROFLMAO:

You spend days/months researching gear, and in the final mile it’s sitting out in the elements all day upside down in some slap dicks truck being thrown around while hitting every pothole and speed bump in town. :facepalm It’s kind of a miracle more stuff doesn’t get thrashed in transit tbh.
 
Whizzinby said:
This x100. When I bought my SLO about 3-4 years ago, it was around this time of year when they hire seasonal drivers. I was keeping an eye for the delivery truck when this pickup pulls up across the street. To my horror I see a Soldano box in the back of his bed. The thing is propped up on its side upside down floating around the truck with a bunch of other random victims packages. I could have defeated Usain Bolt getting out to that truck. I crawled into his truck bed to retrieve It. :ROFLMAO:

You spend days/months researching gear, and in the final mile it’s sitting out in the elements all day upside down in some slap dicks truck be thrown around while hitting every pothole and speed bump in town. :facepalm It’s kind of a miracle more stuff doesn’t get thrashed in transit tbh.
Click to expand...

Good thing murder is illegal …
 
SwirlyMaple said:
Hey Cliff, I appreciate the reply very much, but please don't take it out on them unless there's strong evidence of incompetence with their work on your end. Especially not around the holidays.

The issue before I sent it in was highly intermittent -- it went 4 or 5 days after the first issues without a hiccup, after being powered for many hours. Then the next week, it started to exhibit the issues randomly again, and by the time I sent it in, it had gotten so bad that I wasn't sure it was ever going to boot again. But the morning I sent it back, it booted up completely normally right before I boxed it up! I thought nobody would believe me if I hadn't recorded the videos of it.

Anyway, I'm sure it'll all get worked out. I'm not angry, and I'd hate for someone to lose a job so close the holidays over my FM9. I could totally believe that the issues the tech saw went away completely after the work they did, only to reappear after it was shipped, because I saw essentially the same thing happen when in was still in my hands. :)

Edit: also, I want to add that I doubt the noise I hear of something tiny & loose inside has anything to do with the issues. It's behaving a lot like it did before I sent it in, and it had no loose noises before that. If they re-seated the connectors and had to remove the original glue staking, maybe it's just a fleck of that glue that got loose. Not sure -- I'll send it back without touching it and you can see what it is.
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I’m impressed with how you’ve handled this dilemma Swirly Maple.
 
SwirlyMaple said:
Well, I got my FM9 back from RMA this morning. Box looked great; no damage at all. As soon as I took it out of the bag, I noticed the sound of something very tiny falling from end to end inside it.
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Dude, Cliff got involved back when one of his tech's used what looked like clear silicone to reseat the USB connector on someone else's unit; You should let him know. Edit: I see he responded.

That's sounds to me like a screw got dropped, and never found during initial build, and this recent tech missed it. Probably shorted out something on a board.
 
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norminal said:
Sadly, shipping companies go from “IDGAF” to “I REALLY DGAF” this time of year.

This is no doubt a result of the box being dropped or thrown. So try not to let that ruin your first impressions of Fractal products.
Click to expand...

Re: shipping damage, I'm not sure. The original issue which caused me to return it looked (IMO) like a classic intermittent fault of a borderline component or solder joint, because it only ever happened after it'd been powered on for at least a half hour, so temperature was likely a factor (but I checked the fan and could hear it working, and it had lots of airflow around it and no blocked fan port, so it wasn't due to abnormally-hot temps. Just normal self-heating.)

I doubted that it was just a ribbon cable to the screen, because not only was the screen crapping out, but the tempo LED was misbehaving and the scribble strips would sometimes go totally dark too. If it was anything cabling-related, I figured it would've been one of the other cables that connects the upper electronics to the lower ones, but not the display ribbon. This is why I was paranoid about repairing it in the first place rather than swapping it -- I've been here, done this, bought the T-shirt many times before with other electronics I've had to fix in my day job and personal life.

Regardless, I definitely don't think any less of Fractal products because of it. I still know the sounds coming out of it were awesome when it was working, and I had quickly grown to really like a LOT of things about it (even the UI for the most part). Modern electronics have a certain % failure rate that is impossible to fully eliminate. Once in a while, somebody will draw the short straw. It's a miracle that all our electronics gadgets are as reliable as they are, given the extraordinary complexity of everything nowadays. You practically can't even see some of the surface-mount stuff in modern smartphones without a microscope, and larger boards and ICs like the ones in the FM9 still have a lot going on.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Dude, Cliff got involved back when one of his tech's used what looked like clear silicone to reseat the USB connector on someone else's unit; You should let him know. Edit: I see he responded.

That's sounds to me like a screw got dropped, and never found during initial build, and this recent tech missed it. Probably shorted out something on a board.
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There was nothing loose inside it before I sent it back. I checked. The "tilt-test" is something we do after every vibration test at work to immediately see if something broke ;)

I'm guessing the noise in it now is just some sort of unrelated FOD like the staking glue I mentioned earlier, but it's still in there and they can check when they get it back. I'm not going to open it; my new one is already on the way and this one is already back in its box ;)
 
SwirlyMaple said:
There was nothing loose inside it before I sent it back. I checked. The "tilt-test" is something we do after every vibration test at work to immediately see if something broke ;)

I'm guessing the noise in it now is just some sort of unrelated FOD like the staking glue I mentioned earlier, but it's still in there and they can check when they get it back. I'm not going to open it; my new one is already on the way and this one is already back in its box ;)
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Ah yes FOD 😂
 
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