From pete1000@waitrose.com Wed May 31 07:46:53 2000
Subject:Re: [Voce] Re: Was V-5 shorting out...Now Poor Service

Hi everybody,

Like everybody else, I'm a little worried about the scenario of my V5
going belly up at some stage and there being no support. I'm in a
different situation to most list members I suspect, since I live in
London, UK where Voce products aren't even distributed. I imported mine
directly from DR Strings, who I found to be quite helpful. I dealt with
one of the company's directors, Mark Dronge, and the unit arrived as
promised. To my delight the V5 sounded great. To my horror, it ceased
working after a couple of hours! I suspected the 240 volt wall wart
(power supply) and was correct in my assumption. Zero volts.

I immediately emailed DR Strings and soon (within a day or so) got a
reply expressing deep regret at my predicament. After consultation with
their technical boffins, they told me that there was likely a fault with
the V5 itself that caused the power supply to fail, and advised me not
to find a replacement just yet. Instead, Mark Dronge was to visit London
on social visit the following weekend and he would bring a swap out V5
and power supply. We hooked up and I got my new V5 complete with another
UK style power supply, and a spare european 2-prong power supply. The V5
had been tested in USA and had worked fine.

Unfortunately the second UK power supply went the same way as the first,
again after a couple of hours use. I tried the european style one and
have had no problems since. I've used the V5 at home and on gigs with
increasing confidence. I suspect that the batch of UK power supplies is
faulty. Dr Strings weren't to know this at first as they hadn't a UK
distributor at the time, me being probably one of the first UK users.

Anyway, I got an email from Mark Dronge a few months back asking me how
I was getting on with the V5, and to say that he'd negotiated a UK
distribution deal with Turnkey, a London-based Hi-tech music store. This
would be good news for me, since it suggested that there may be
technical support at a future date. I've heard nothing since, and have
seen no listing of Voce products in Turnkey's adverts, but I hope that
something does get sorted out.

I think that as Bruce Wahler points out, DR Strings are on the whole
well meaning, but a bit out of their depth in terms of tech support.
Let's hope this improves. In the mean time, I'll pass on any news of
authorized repairers etc. here in the UK if I hear of any. There may be
some European support already.... Any european list members ?

Cheers and good luck,

Pete W

Bruce Wahler wrote:

> Bruce H., and the Voce Group as a whole,
>
> I'm sorry to hear about the problems that everyone is having with Voce
>
> products. I was a bit afraid of this when I first talked to DR Music
> 18
> months ago. The people there were pretty psyched about having Voce in
>
> their product line, but it was clear that they didn't have a lot of
> information about the product, and were deferring to Dave Amels, Voce,
>
> Inc.'s co-founder and spokesman. I was hoping that this was just a
> case
> of "first night jitters", but it looks like that isn't the case. DR
> Music is really a guitar string manufacturer, and this line of
> technology-heavy products is not all that well suited to their
> background.
>
> The whole Voce re-birth seems to be a good news/bad news scenario:
> the
> good news is that Voce is still alive, and in fact, without DR the V5
> would nave never seen the light of day. The bad news is that the
> support and service didn't pull through. (snip)