Give the man a break. I have called and spoken to him before. Met him at the show last year in Canada. He is friendly and would not mind giving "free advice". Right now, I have 3 cartridges with him waiting to be done. Frankly, Soundsmith has confirmed that they have received the cartridges. They gave me a #. Recently they sent an email saying the cartridges are ready to be worked on an gave me an ETA. I believe that is good communication.
When it gets done, it will get done. |
Hello,
Peter is not an assembly line robot, he is a human being that gets sick from time to time, partly because he works way too much. And he does it out of his strong feeling of responsibility for the people he employs. His obligation to customers is equally strong, but sometimes one can answer only so many question via phone or email within a 24hour day, sometimes there is no time left after 12hours+ of physically reducing the backlog.
Those who think he should just hire another person to give all the written and spoken advice need to get in touch with reality. Customers want to talk to or hear from THE MAN HIMSELF. Few if any (potential) customers would take it from the mouth of what they see being just a helper or secretary, no matter how thourough the briefing(or actual experience/knowledge).
Forums like this created the popularity(I dare not call it hype): - remember, that before Peter's work was widely known, you'd be sending your cart to Benz, the Garrot Brothers or Mr. VdH. And waited just as long or longer(but paid quite a bit more). Not to mention the cost for a rebuild by, say, Koetsu.
Why take more orders that one seems to be able to handle? Because you never know what the next month looks like in this business...
Good night,
Frank Schröder |
I received a phone call about this thread. I will respond to the many issues raised here, and post it here soon.
I want to gather my thoughts first, and respond in a thoughtful considered manner. Maybe to address the main thread here, I need to double my prices for retipping and cartridge rebuilding so I can be in line with the pricing of the rest of the retippers in the world, and hire a full time person to communicate better. With 150 - 200 Emails I get each day, many looking for free advice, it is a big job. Some of those complain as well, when I don't answer in 48 hours with free advice.
Emails are not perfect. Some Emails get lost in our mailwasher program. If we don't respond, we didn't get your Email. Try using a phone to reach us.
Yes, when I get a difficult cartridge, I put it aside to try to make a day's pay, and get to it late at night. The extra effort I make is to save someone's cartridge and their hard earned money, even if it needs extra work at no extra charge. Those DO get delayed. Maybe I do need to stop doing that and just give up on them, and their cartridge.
Again, I will respond fully soon here on this thread.
Peter Ledermann/Soundsmith |
I just spoke with Peter. Today is Sunday. He called from the office, where he is retipping carts. Which is very typical of him- he usually works on weekends and also late in the evening doing the retips and building the higher end Soundsmith carts, as there is no one else who can do this. That also goes a long way in explaining why his retips typically sound BETTER than the cartridge sounded out of the factory, and why I have never heard of anyone being unhappy with his work.
Out here in rural Pennsylvania, you can often find a sign tacked onto the wall in an auto garage or workshop, which reads the following-
YOU CAN HAVE IT DONE FAST
YOU CAN HAVE IT DONE WELL
YOU CAN HAVE IT DONE CHEAP
BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE ALL THREE
Ledermann is quite literally a gift to the audiophile community. He is the only retipper and cartridge rebuilder in the US that I know of, and he makes some of the worlds absolute finest cartridges, while charging a fraction of what other companies command. If you are finding the wait too long, simply pick up the phone and ask to speak to Peter personally. He has a very big operation, contrary to what you may think, with lots of people working for him, but he will ALWAYS take the time to talk with you if you ask for that.
Disclaimer- My company (OMA) is a Soundsmith dealer. |
I'm going to say that it's probably an issue of how much work is on the bench at any particular time. There's only so many hours in the day and so many of those that they can dedicate to rebuilding vs. building their new carts. In all, though, I can't think of a better place to send your work to be done. |
I sent a B&O 8000 table in to be refurbished in November 2009. Original estimate was 6 - 8 weeks. Then I was notified very shortly thereafter it would be closer to 8 - 12 weeks. That was all fine with me. We're pushing on close to 20 weeks now and I haven't heard or seen nothing from Soundsmith. I never called, emailed, or otherwise inquired because I know Peter is busy, but still one has to wonder if they are that busy why do they continually take on more work than they can handle.
It's to the point where I have really lost all interest in the project and ordered a new table altogether which will most likely get here before the B&O. While I'm glad to hear that some have had better experiences, it appears that may be the exception rather than the rule. |
I just had my Shelter 501 II rebuilt at the $250.00 level and am a completely satisfied customer. When I initiated the work, I was given an estimate of how long it would take and they completed the work within the estimated timeframe. My suggestion is to be patient and not bug them until they have exceeeded the original time estimate.
You have absolutely nothing to gain by rushing a master craftsman and I can only imagine what his reaction would be if someone was pestering him as busy as he is.
Jack
|
Not sure about the hang up, however truth is I call the New York number, listen to a very long winded "Welcome message" on a machine, Finally it allows you to hit "9" I believe is the #, and it connects me to live customer service everytime.
No problem with communications, I sent my Cartridge into them Jan. 21st or 22nd, came back on about March 15th to 20th. So about 6 weeks like they say. Also I paid 19 bucks extra to make sure they expedited it back with 2 Day fed ex shipping.
No issues beyond that, perfect service, good enough communication, Zero issues with the quality of work and of course the sound of this sucker is super sweet!
My only suggestion is that its VERY possible the more exotic the cart. or simply the more a "Pain in the Ass" it might take longer to dissassemble and get correct, so unfortunately you get pushed back on the basic economics of it when he has 10 bread and butter denon carts sitting there all getting the same "Flat Fee cost" that can get done in 2 days vs. 2 weeks of work or special parts, adhesive or whatever.
I can't even tell how some of these carts could easily come apart to be cleaned, aligned, and signal tested, which from my understanding they go deep finishing and testing these with even perfect channel matching balance. Probably lots of microscopes involved I don't know!
Just a guess I don't know but there has to be some strange reason with the inconsistencys, because they take no payments up front and probably for good reason, they can't evaluate until they really get it in the shop I assume.
Plus if 50 people send these in all at one time I can imagine vs. if they get only 15 in one month instead? I have to be honest we have no clue how many go, there could literally be a back room with 1000 little boxes all virtually the same sitting at one time of virtually 2% to 20% of the audiophile population in the world sending their cart. to these guys, and they simply get lost in the shuffle.
Good Luck |
One person recently sold a Soundsmith cartridge - he referred to the time spent at Soundsmith as a "glacial epoch".
Awesome!
|
Cartridge rebuilding is such a popular line of work that tech school graduates are turned away in the thousands by companies like Soundsmith, Benz, VdH and so many others. Within these labs, lucky workers develop in mere days the skills required to perfectly install and align itty bitty fragile cantilevers in the superstrong magnetic fields of very expensive cartridges while wearing bearskin mittens. These two factors explain why nobody needs to wait for a cartridge rebuild.
Tasteless joking aside, the wait time was very long but Soundsmith came through for me. They did a Cardas Heart Reference and a Koetsu Rosewood Sig. I highly recommend them. If anyone wants to try Benz, the wait time was exactly the same for the cart I sent there. |
D,"the customer is eventually satisfied" is not a real flattering description of how a business should operate.
BTW,nobody has accused them of being "shady".Maybe I just expect more from a business. |
Tpreaves, This is certainly true. However IMO it is most important to know that Soundsmith is a clean and straight and reasonably priced service and that the customer is eventually satisfied. One occasionally encounters shady operators in audio, and Soundsmith is not one of these. |
Whether or not the "work is stellar" or "the wait is worth it",a company should acknowledge when a customer communicates with them.The treatment you are recieving is just bad business practice that seems to be happening more and more according to the number of threads addressing problems similar to yours. |
Al, mine was finished at 7 mos. after many fruitless queries. The cartridge was finished the day after I requested return of the cartridge finished or unfinished. The work was good, but obviously it is possible to get buried in the backlog. Reading remarks of other posters who obtained much faster service during the period that my cartridge was there, I am led to conclude that they do not operate on a first-come first-serve basis. Peter performs a valuable & honest service but one must be prepared for a much longer than advertized wait. |
I used Peter's service about 4 years ago. Excellent results, BTW. It took maybe 6 weeks. Since then it seems his work load has exploded. Not fun waiting, I know. Reminds me of the great restaurant that everyone loves, so it takes 1 1/2 hours to get seated. |
No word from them yet on a cartridge I sent in 6 months ago, in early October, 2009. Another member reported here a few months ago that the work on his cartridge was completed after 7 months.
Regards,
-- Al |
