Metal Guitarist Forums banner

Kiesel Drama

Tags
drama kiesel
32K views 152 replies 42 participants last post by  jacksonplayer 
#1 ·
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/kiesel-guitars.2139713/#post-30366357

Since we're all in quarantine, enjoy.

Wanting to bring attention to a situation over on the Kiesel Facebook page.

A dude ordered a roasted maple neck and roasted fingerboard and the thing got delivered looking brown neck and white fretboard. Not at all like the pictures or what you would expect. He raised this and was basically told to go away.

The company was asked about it by another user on their live stream and the owner, Jeff, dealt with this is by berating the guy who's guitar it was by calling him a whiner and a baby etc... The guy has had many Kiesel/Carvins over the years. This is such crappy behaviour. Especially for a loyal customer.

There was a 500 comment post on FB talking about this that Kiesel just deleted and the just now another post has started that is kicking off. I'm sure that post will get deleted too however I wanted to bring this to the attention of the wider guitar playing group that isn't on a platform that is run by Kiesel. If I could figure out how to get the picture of the guys guitar on this post I would, I have it saved on my desktop. If anyone can help let me know.

I think Kiesel make awesome guitars, I've been eyeing off my first build for a long time however now I know how the company is run it's making me think that I can't support this type of person and company when there are a lot of other smaller builders who would look after their customers. This may seem small or trivial but if I'm buying a custom guitar and it comes to me clearly wrong and the owner of the company then insults me on a live stream after I've just given him $2K....come on....
 
#2 ·


Kiesel said:
"We gave the guy 3 options
1) Keep the guitar and quit whining
2) Send it back pay the restock fee, and get rebuild a done
3) We're gonna refund you, part ways, and never sell you another instrument"
TLDR: Customer ordered a guitar, it was not what he wanted, Jeff Kiesel decided the best way to handle the issue was to insult the guy on a live stream.

Why on earth anyone gives this moron their money is beyond me. :lol:
 
#5 ·
On the left, normal maple fretboard. On the right, roasted board Kiesel called the guy a whiner on a livestream for not being happy with.



What the customer paid for/asked for/etc was for the board to match the headstock:

 
#7 ·
Back when it was Carvin and they were relatively inexpensive, their policy of somewhat lax quality control with a (relatively) generous return policy made sense. The guitars are more expensive now, and the quality control should be raised to match. If they can't deliver highly customized instruments reliably, then they should go back to just having a more limited options list like Carvin did.

No excuse for the company owner being a knob, but people should be used that by now. Classic example of a guy inheriting a business he didn't build and then running it into the ground.
 
#12 ·
I didnt see pics in the sso kiesel megathread, so this one is even better.

I would feel worse for the buyer, but surely they've heard the horror stories. Probably assumed it wouldnt happen to a loyal customer (cant fault their thinking there).

But they will still get orders.
 
#14 ·
Unfortunately true. Sales/profits will shrink and people will get let go but Jeff will go on and on about how they are the best they've ever been. I certainly miss the old carvin days. DC727s used to be one of the best 7 string guitars for the cash especially if you were after a specific sound. I regret not ordering a walnut/walnut one before I lost all desire to send them some money.
 
#13 ·
The customer didn't complain that the neck wasn't dark enough, he complained that the fretboard wasn't dark enough. And while you may not be able to tell a tree to grow darker wood, the tree didn't mate that fretboard to that neck.
 
#15 ·
I'm fine with Kiesel sticking around. I know people who own Kiesels. Kiesel and Kiesel owners deserve each other. In spite of rampant douchebaggery, businesses like that only exist because the demographic who buys them will always be there, far beyond that, the demographic will always be pretty fucking huge. If Kiesel goes away, we risk that spot being filled by someone else arguably less entertaining than Kiesel.

I love how one of the options Kiesel gave the customer was "3) We're gonna refund you, part ways, and never sell you another instrument". (didn't see where this happened verbatim, I guess there were several videos at this point) and people think that has caveats. That is a perfectly good option. Albeit Carvin had been known for their weirdly devoted cult like following before Kiesel though, though it was in a different demographic.

Kiesel's entire premise is giving you the cachet of much more expensive "custom options painstakingly handcrafted in America by the finest masters in the business" guitars for 1/3rd of the price. If you can't tell that premise doesn't hold up to scrutiny, it's honestly not all Kiesel's fault you are spending money on stupid shit.

To the outside observer this situation is somewhat confusing, because it just seems like, "Buyer ordered ugly Kiesel, buyer received ugly Kiesel". I assume the specifics were in it not being the right variety of ugly Kiesel.
 
#18 ·
I'm going to start using this saying from the Rig Talk thread as a general use metaphor though.



For when you are having an unrelated conversation but you really want to make it about Wesley Snipes. Which is fine by me.

Although honestly it raises even more questions. Like, which neck is supposed to be the Wesley Snipes neck? I'm assuming the more badass one. But then it raises the questions of, why does this dude hate Ron Howard?

Wouldn't it have made more sense to use Ron Hubbard, found of dianetics?

I never saw the appeal of roasted maple, but now that I know it's the badass black dude vampire hunter of neck woods I am in.

 
#21 ·
I just want to mention that if anyone wants to give me $2500 for my Pre-nutjob-management Carvin that has no stupid bevels, a normal proper ebony board, correctly aligned fret markers and absolutely zero djent qualities, hit me up.

It's 100% better looking than any dumb shit they've put out since they became the #1 source for ugly guitars for djenters who can't play but have mediocre credit and a willingness to pay 19% APR on a guitar they use to photograph for instagram.

They don't make them like this anymore so the value is only going up, invest today! :yesway:
 
#59 ·
I just want to mention that if anyone wants to give me $2500 for my Pre-nutjob-management Carvin that has no stupid bevels, a normal proper ebony board, correctly aligned fret markers and absolutely zero djent qualities, hit me up.

It's 100% better looking than any dumb shit they've put out since they became the #1 source for ugly guitars for djenters who can't play but have mediocre credit and a willingness to pay 19% APR on a guitar they use to photograph for instagram.

They don't make them like this anymore so the value is only going up, invest today! :yesway:
That guitar is a Carvin National Treasure.
 
#22 ·
That TGP thread is amazing. I just skimmed it reading a sentence here and there. There were so many laugh out loud funny parts.

I like how the Suhr guys came in and mentioned "vulcanization" being slightly different from roasting, which in itself is slightly more advanced than just burning something, "baking" is its own thing entirely, "toasting" hasn't been mentioned yet. "Vulcanization" actually specifically refers to rubber, but everyone just wants a fancier way of saying "we burned it". In spite of the fact Vulcan is the roman god of fire, so it's just a fancy way of saying "burning something", and then some dude comes in like, ten pages in and one ups them with "torrefaction" which is an even fancier word for burning something.

Other highlights.



:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:



I have no clue what this means. :lol:



I SAID GOOD DAY SIR. I don't even know what PRSSH is, but I assume it's something like how PRS owners pluralize things as "PRSi".



Wait......you can return used strings if you keep the receipt? I've been doing it wrong for years.



Your expectation is a prison. Fear......fear is the mind killer man.
 
#26 ·

I SAID GOOD DAY SIR. I don't even know what PRSSH is, but I assume it's something like how PRS owners pluralize things as "PRSi".
PRSH = Paul Reed Smith Himself. As in the man, not the brand.

I ordered a full set of blanks to build a guitar a while back, one of them being a roasted maple (sycamore in this case) fretboard blank. Judging by the chart that store has, the fretboard on that Keisel wasn't roasted at all.
Can't say I'm surprised they made a mistake that big, or that Keisel had that response to it, though. It's far from the first time. :noplease:
 
#24 ·
I just hope now Greg Howe, Jason Becker and Frank Gambale will leave so I know they are not being supplied guitars by this guy.

The way I have seen him interact with some of his "Artists," it doesn't seem like he even cares.

Always had an odd feeling about him as soon as I saw him take over the company with his new name and everything.
Glad to know I wasn't wrong.
 
#25 ·
The best hot take from the TGP thread is when some dude accidentally forgets its "any publicity is good publicity" and instead calls it "negative marketing" and some other dude busts in and is like,

"EXACTLY, THE CLASSIC NEW COKE STRATEGY, RISKY, BUT POTENTIALLY BRILLIANT"



Continuing under the assumption that New Coke was secretly a conspiracy to drive up demand for Old Coke by introducing a new product/strategy that sucked, I am not sure whether this dude means Kiesel was started specifically to suck to drive up demand for Carvin's eventual resurrection, or whether Kiesel just periodically sucks on purpose to drive up demand for an eventual return to "better Kiesels".
 
#30 ·
This is why I respect Ola so much, he has an unhappy customer and makes it right. Anyone as bad as Kiesel at customer service should be banned from interacting with customers... or humans... forever.
 
#33 ·
To me it looks like daddys boy needs a time-out or his nanny should take hims smart phone away when hims diaper Ims full. What a asshole.... In all my years I cant imagine ever doing that to a customer, and I have delt with some real pricks, but you never do what he did. I have fired people for less than that. No matter what you loose and you look like a total tool.
 
#46 ·
I'm just waiting for the drama next week, when the story breaks that Kiesel took $3 million in Coronavirus SBA loans under the pretext that they had to stay afloat to keep their staff on payroll.

Including the team they employ to roast maple necks, even though their existence is kind of up in the air at the moment. No one has ever seen them.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top