Unhappy with this electronics company

Bo Eder

Bo Eder

Platinum Member
I thought I was going to be able to carry my own powered subwoofer (for cheap) with me this year, and that's just not gonna happen.

I ordered a brand-new, 15" powered sub-woofer from this company and upon arrival, it was broken. I made them have FedEx come back out to me to pick it up and ship it back, then they shipped me another one (this was just in June of this summer). This is Tennesee to California, mind you, shipping 70 pounds in an over-sized box!

Then, just three months later, the amplifier part ceased functioning. This time, I had to pay for shipping for just the amplifier part, and they sent me a new amplifier.

Upon installation, this new amplifier started acting up, particularly with the satellite speaker output - sometimes it would work fine, other times one side would be dead.

So I've had it. I can't even trust the gear enough to think I'd be able to use it. I did what I could to make it work and passed it off to a relative who doesn't mind working on stuff, but I'm done with this company. And the funny thing, I've read many a positive review about them - lots of people own them and aren't having any issues. But I have a subwoofer that won't even work properly and has already been replaced twice within a six-month period. Unbelieveable.

I know I tout just staying with tried-and-true equipment, and in the end I ended up doing just that - I bought a new Crown power amp to power my remaining speakers, and just the peace of mind is worth the expense. I would tell everyone to avoid this particular brand, but alot of people use it and they like it. So what do I know?

Thanks for letting me vent!
 
A lot people and companies are having issues with the new Class D gear. I'm sure that many companies contract out the design work, and with a long industrial chain trying to save a penny here/there, it's bad for the quality.

On the other end of the spectrum is the consumer. We're not used to the new demands of Class D. We use extension cords and low quality power strips. We use power inverters from an RV, or plug into a gasoline-powered generator. We end up blowing up perfectly good amplifiers.

So yeah. It sucks for a lot of people right about now.

At my brother's shop, there's a pile of in-warranty Class D gear waiting for RMA. When replacements come in, "this company" has the shop throw the broken units away, because it's cheaper to trash it than to ship-refurbish-ship.
 
KamaK said:
A lot people and companies are having issues with the new Class D gear. I'm sure that many companies contract out the design work, and with a long industrial chain trying to save a penny here/there, it's bad for the quality.

On the other end of the spectrum is the consumer. We're not used to the new demands of Class D. We use extension cords and low quality power strips. We use power inverters from an RV, or plug into a gasoline-powered generator. We end up blowing up perfectly good amplifiers.

So yeah. It sucks for a lot of people right about now.

At my brother's shop, there's a pile of in-warranty Class D gear waiting for RMA. When replacements come in, "this company" has the shop throw the broken units away, because it's cheaper to trash it than to ship-refurbish-ship.
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You're not suggesting that I'm using faulty cords or inverters in my own home, are you? This sub never made it outside of my home, plugged directly into the wall - and I know my house wiring is up to code ;)
 
From my perspective, for smaller bands without a dedicated sound man, it is not advisable to run a sub for drums directly on stage....if the kit is miced that is. It certainly creates unwanted bleed into the kick mic. If no kick mic, then sure the vocal and amp mics are typically high pass filtered to avoid the sub region.

I run sound in all the bands I have worked with....and have experienced many drummers that are never pleased with how they are hearing the kick....but a sub does nasty things to floor toms and kick drums. If you are using in ears, there is a flaw in driving them directly off a small board with a drum submix....the impedance of in ear monitors can be lower than 32 ohms and the boards don't have the current drive or they have a protection resistor on the headphine out that reacts poorly creating a frequency dependent voltage divider which ultimately drops the lows from the in ear monitors.

I have solved the problem repeatedly with myself, pros and drummers in my bands ( I work for an IEM mfg) by putting a headphone amplifier on the output of the drum submix board mix line out or even headphone output.....for instance, the SM Pro Audio HP6 is cost effective and easily drives IEMs....lows restored, everyone happy. I do this with my own kit as well

If not using IEM as drumming monitors on stage, for self mixed bands and smaller stages with a miced kit, I would and do much prefer a kicker like the pearl....subs and powered subs for the drums....on stage....magnify the problems and volume wars and there are much more effective and less disruptive ways to get solid kick feedback.

Another very effective measure is just to trigger the kick even if it is not for FOH and only for feedback. For 7 years, I had my drummer using a dirt cheap TD6 with a ddrum trigger....TD6 output into small drum submix....or even submix fed back from FOH mixer. Kick is both miced and triggered and one option or a mix of both will always provide the Grail to FOH and drummer submix.
 
Bo Eder said:
You're not suggesting that I'm using faulty cords or inverters in my own home, are you? This sub never made it outside of my home, plugged directly into the wall - and I know my house wiring is up to code ;)
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No. I'm just stating that the whole situation is a mess, and that it is much much worse than "this company". It's many companies, and many consumers getting screwed. And why plug in a 1500w amp on a 15watt breaker. I'd do it! Oops.

The majority of the stack in my brothers shop is 1 year old Bass combo amps. Typically 300w - 500w, just barely in warranty. All fried either due to cheap component failure, fail-by-design ventilation, or user ignorance.

I'm sad to hear you got caught up in this.
 
I'm no electronics expert, but I do run a lot of sound gear, & have many industry pro sound contact/friends. The moment I hear "small", "portable", "sub" & "drums" in the same sentence, I smell trouble. The only small sub I know that ever took a beating is a little 500W RMS unit from DB Technologies. maybe that was a fluke, I don't know.

When I say "beating", I'm referring to what most drummers would think of as normal use. Especially with drums that are tuned to produce a fuller/longer note (& that's likely to include you Bo), even at modest volumes, you're asking a lot of a small unit. Moving air is exactly that, & requires big stuff to deliver effective results WITH HEADROOM. Pretty much ignore all the power ratings too on all but the real pro gear. Sometimes it's presented as peak power, sometimes RMS (effectively "average"), but that matters little. Many manufacturers will install an amp with a headline rating to attract sales, yet it's connected to a driver that's woefully inadequate. That usually has the affect of blowing the amp not the speaker. Anyhow, I won't even look at a unit that takes drums with an SPL under 135db. Go by SPL, & you stand some chance of ascertaining suitability.

I'm not saying you overloaded your unit Bo. It's quite possible it was poorly designed / constructed, but using small subs usually intended for very low SPL reinforcement of hobby grade full range systems is usually asking for unreliability.

As others have mentioned, if the intention is monitoring, use a tactile monitoring throne. Porter & Davies being the gold standard in that department IMHO. Superb for louder stages/gigs, & no issues with stage spill & stuff.
 
In this case, the sub arrived broken the first time, so I'd have to lay the blame at the feet of the company, dodgy wiring or no. They don't make 'em like they used to.
 
keep it simple said:
I'm not saying you overloaded your unit Bo. It's quite possible it was poorly designed / constructed, but using small subs usually intended for very low SPL reinforcement of hobby grade full range systems is usually asking for unreliability.
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Indeed. The unit was most likely defective-by-design.

It's one of the reasons I asked about that Fender Rumble 500v3 a couple months ago. I'm a hobbit and don't want to spend the money on a Markbass or SVT, but so much of the intermediate gear these days is complete trash.
 
KamaK said:
Indeed. The unit was most likely defective-by-design.

It's one of the reasons I asked about that Fender Rumble 500v3 a couple months ago. I'm a hobbit and don't want to spend the money on a Markbass or SVT, but so much of the intermediate gear these days is complete trash.
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I can only remark with any direct experience relative to sound reinforcement, not rear line gear, but most of the general consumer market is specification lead, & that says little about the gear's actual abilities. Moving air is an expensive game. Always has been, always will be, & there's no substitute for headroom + efficiency.

You pretty much get what you pay for. If there's two pieces of gear, both with the same spec's, but one is half the price of the other - it's red flag time. I have two pairs of 18" Logic System powered 5th order bandpass subs. They cost around $4,000/cab. There's powered subs around at 1/3rd of the price with the same spec's (excluding SPL), but they don't even come close in terms of delivery & reliability.
 
Do we not get the name of said company so that we may avaoid them n the future?
 
GRUNTERSDAD said:
Do we not get the name of said company so that we may avaoid them n the future?
Click to expand...

Honestly... "This Company" is every company with the exception of possibly a half dozen or so that cater to the high end. Some companies cater to both, like JBL, where they sell the AWSOM-1000 for $1000 and the SHT-1000 for $300. Both the AWSOM-1000 and SHT-1000 will have the same specs on paper, but the SHT-1000 will burn your house down when it dies 1 week outside of the 90-day warranty.
 
keep it simple said:
I'm no electronics expert, but I do run a lot of sound gear, & have many industry pro sound contact/friends. The moment I hear "small", "portable", "sub" & "drums" in the same sentence, I smell trouble. The only small sub I know that ever took a beating is a little 500W RMS unit from DB Technologies. maybe that was a fluke, I don't know.

When I say "beating", I'm referring to what most drummers would think of as normal use. Especially with drums that are tuned to produce a fuller/longer note (& that's likely to include you Bo), even at modest volumes, you're asking a lot of a small unit. Moving air is exactly that, & requires big stuff to deliver effective results WITH HEADROOM. Pretty much ignore all the power ratings too on all but the real pro gear. Sometimes it's presented as peak power, sometimes RMS (effectively "average"), but that matters little. Many manufacturers will install an amp with a headline rating to attract sales, yet it's connected to a driver that's woefully inadequate. That usually has the affect of blowing the amp not the speaker. Anyhow, I won't even look at a unit that takes drums with an SPL under 135db. Go by SPL, & you stand some chance of ascertaining suitability.

I'm not saying you overloaded your unit Bo. It's quite possible it was poorly designed / constructed, but using small subs usually intended for very low SPL reinforcement of hobby grade full range systems is usually asking for unreliability.

As others have mentioned, if the intention is monitoring, use a tactile monitoring throne. Porter & Davies being the gold standard in that department IMHO. Superb for louder stages/gigs, & no issues with stage spill & stuff.
Click to expand...

Actually, I was t even able to get around to running my drums through it. So it was just faulty being used as a stereo. So I didn't overload it at all.

And the company is Seismic Audio. There. I said it 😳
 
keep it simple said:
& I eluded to such. I know you know your gear :)
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So part of me feels like a heel for thinking this stuff would be 'ok' for what I intended it to do, but to not even get to find out .... that's really sad. I knew I could've just saved alot of time and effort by just going with what I knew would work instead of trying to save a buck on faulty electronics.
 
KamaK said:
Honestly... and SHT-1000 will have the same specs on paper, but the SHT-1000 will burn your house down when it dies 1 week outside of the 90-day warranty.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's why the nomenclature SHT was chosen.
 
Bo Eder said:
So part of me feels like a heel for thinking this stuff would be 'ok' for what I intended it to do, but to not even get to find out .... that's really sad. I knew I could've just saved alot of time and effort by just going with what I knew would work instead of trying to save a buck on faulty electronics.
Click to expand...
We all experiment Bo. I've made one or two really bad decisions on gear in the past, mostly because I was persuaded to try something based on spec's or the opinions of others. It happens - onwards & upwards :)
 
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