Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[John Roberts {JR}]

Anyone heard about other cases of entire shipments of Mackie stuff failing? A friend of mine in the UK had an entire container of Mackie HD series and none of the amplifier modules on the subs were working.

Another guy took apart his HD 3way box and found the main driver only held in by 4 screws instead of 8....

Rather than ask what other people have "heard", lets ask what other people have personally experienced.

Kenny is sharing his first hand experience.

Perhaps your friends can post their first hand experience.

A container full of product with 100% failure rate seems pretty significant.

Regarding the random individual (friday afternoon) unit, I've seen examples of incompletely assembled gear coming out of US factories (with QA people fired as a direct result). You don't want to be the inspector who signed the QA tag on such units. 

 Sh__ happens. Container loads of Sh__ not so much, from real companies. 

I'm am not saying your events did not happen exactly as you suggest, but I would consider first hand experience postings more credible than hearsay.

JR

PS: If anything quality of gear coming from China should be getting better over time. Transient issues can come with starting up a new CM. I seem to recall Mackie having a former CM go out of business (oops). With the cost advantage of Chinese labor eroding quickly I would expect low to moderate volume SKUs to be heading back across the ocean to domestic factories, but I am no longer in those trenches so I can't offer recent first hand experience....

[Brian Charbobs]

"Blanket statements are always wrong."

Some of their stuff was pretty good, some sucked. My US built 1604VLZ Pro has been bouncing around in the back of my van for a decade, done a couple hundred gigs, survived subzero to 100°F+ temperatures and my own poking around the insides for mods and it still works fine. I used it last night. But it would be foolish to generalize an entire history of products based on one mixer. If I were to do that based on my experience with one second generation MixWizard I would say all Allen & Heath sucked, but that would be inaccurate.

That is great to hear your U.S Built Mackie works like it should. You should try the stuff out they are building now, maybe for some but, I will not touch Mackie. Now granted the board I had was part of the lower end stuff, I have a MixWiz and I love it. Could something go wrong? Sure. Im sure there are some here who love Mackie, im sure for many reasons, whatever you want to spend your money is your right.

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

That is great to hear your U.S Built Mackie works like it should. You should try the stuff out they are building now, maybe for some but, I will not touch Mackie. Now granted the board I had was part of the lower end stuff, I have a MixWiz and I love it. Could something go wrong? Sure. Im sure there are some here who love Mackie, im sure for many reasons, whatever you want to spend your money is your right.

I changed the thread title above to more accurately state the "problem".......

[Patrick Tracy]

That is great to hear your U.S Built Mackie works like it should. You should try the stuff out they are building now, maybe for some but, I will not touch Mackie. Now granted the board I had was part of the lower end stuff, I have a MixWiz and I love it. Could something go wrong? Sure. Im sure there are some here who love Mackie, im sure for many reasons, whatever you want to spend your money is your right.

I also have a Chinese built one that works like new. I have had my hands on a VLZ3 and it felt cheap somehow so I probably wouldn't buy one at the moment. The Onyx stuff seems nice and gets mostly positive reviews around here but it's more than I can justify. Probably I'd end up getting a MixWizard if I were in the market because I understand that my one bad experience doesn't apply to the whole company.

[Kenny Deal]

LOUD Technologies owns EAW.  If LOUD is responsible for the problems with the Mackie, why presume the EAW would be any better?

EAW has had enough problems with order fulfillment and QC that LOUD is moving most EAW production back to Whitinsville, MA.  I doubt LOUD will move Mackie back to Washington state, but we could hope, eh?

Hope aint the word. That is where I get my stuff repaired. PANE Audio in Whitinsville. It's about 45 mins from me. They are a division of Loud Technologies. You should see their shop/warehouse. It's soundman heaven. The have some awesome stuff there.I never saw so many speakers and amps in one place. They can modify the stuff a little too. He customizes the horns on the old 450's. I gotta call them Monday for a new Horn.
He showed me the innerds of the new HD stuff.....He recommended me keeps my SA's v HD's

[Tim McCulloch]

Hope aint the word. That is where I get my stuff repaired. PANE Audio in Whitinsville. It's about 45 mins from me. They are a division of Loud Technologies. You should see their shop/warehouse. It's soundman heaven. The have some awesome stuff there.I never saw so many speakers and amps in one place. They can modify the stuff a little too. He customizes the horns on the old 450's. I gotta call them Monday for a new Horn.
He showed me the innerds of the new HD stuff.....He recommended me keeps my SA's v HD's

I was in Whitinsville for my first Smaart class with Jamie Anderson (2004, has it been that long ago?).  It was my first visit to that part of Mass and the "picture postcard" background of old mills and the waters that powered them was impressive.  Beautiful stuff.

[Kenny Deal]

If I post the spec sheet of the SA1521z can you guys help me pick out a better RCF replacement horn ? I get the speakers usually from parts express but there are a million different horns that size. I don't know how to spec out a speaker.
http://www.mackie.com/pdf/sa1521_ss.pdf

[Richard Stringer]

I have a friend in London who owns a dj store and he ordered in a sh*t load of Mackie SRM1801 subs and quite a few HD1531 cabs, and after selling nearly all of them over a two month period, all but 2 of them came back in for repiar. Then to make matters worse, they got Loud Technologies in the shop to repair them, and after a few days of having sent them back out to customers, all but 1 came back in again having failed a second time. This time all the customers who had their gear failed wanted refunds and they said they wanted a different manufacturer equipment instead. Soon after that the shop stopped dealing with Loud Technologies and has stopped stocking anything from Mackie and refuses to order anything for anyone from Mackie. A couple of my freinds  had Mackie audio interfaces both of which failed, the outputs were extremely noisy and the units would turn off on their own, the power would just fail, then come back on. I was speaking to two people on youtube last november about pa gear when I was thinking about some new mid/highs and ideally wanted Mackie HD1531 cabs, but they both said in their own words not to buy any.

The reason being, because one of them had bought four, all four of which failed, and the other guy said he bought a pair and one of them failed during a gig which was devastating for him because it's ruined his rep and he's lost business due to it.

Now, the reason I see EAW, even though it's also owned by Loud Technologies, doesn't have gear failing left, right and centre is probably due to quality control, I should EAW's top people are strict over quality control. Either that or maybe Loud Technologies know that with EAW they HAVE to get it right or they'll lose BIG business because EAW is one of the most respected live sound loudspeaker brands in the world. I would think pretty much that with some Mackie gear working perfectly and some or rather quite a lot failing, it shows that Mackie's production quality consistency is all shot to hell, if products aren't 100% consistant then what's the point in even buying the gear from that manufacturer?

Think about it, if a coffee shop had bad consistency then that coffee shop would fail, they NEED every coffee of a certain type to taste identical in order to keep in business. It seems, for the most part that Mackie's consistency is completely shite.

[Roland Clarke]

The only problem is that the thread is talking about issues that people have had with Mackie gear, and almost by it's inference, that "All Mackie gear is unrealiable". 

If the thread was indicative of Mackie products as a whole, I would expect that Mackie couldn't survive and I find it impossible to believe that they have a totally casual attitude to faults and problems with their products.  They are a "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" manufacturer, returns must cost them dearly, even more so than a premium manufacturer who probably has a lot more margin to cover potential problems. 

In spite of the anacdotal, evidence, quoted here, internally there must be repercussions for the staff who are involved with quality control, design, manufacture etc.  These sort of issues must significantly effect the bottom line and I suspect that being truly successful in their sector of the industry comes from producing "cheap", but good, "bang for the buck," products that provide reliable service, therefore, gaining a reputation to shift more of those products, something both Mackie and even Behringer have managed to do significantly in "difficult" trading conditions.

[Kenny Deal]

The only problem is that the thread is talking about issues that people have had with Mackie gear, and almost by it's inference, that "All Mackie gear is unrealiable". 

 

As the OP I stated specifically which units I felt were poor and in fact stated that in the past found MAckie stuff to be a good company . I spke specifically abou the products I own and made reference to product I saw dissembled on a bench at a repair shop and quoted the tech.
I had  a CFX20 and though it was a great board for live sound for a band on a bidget running thier own sound. No issues with it at all. I'm on my 2nd 808 and both were IMHO the best Combo all in ones out there. The previous SRM450s and SRS 1500s were also great....However....My experience with the SA's has not been positive. Dick brought up a valid point that I did purchase these used however the repair shops seem to be making a nice living off sme of Mackie's newer stuff.
Now that said  I also deal with a repair shop out of PA who is also excellent and I contacted him about the possible issue with the horn. He mentioned a few possible replacements for the driver from RCF and selenium but recommended against it. He said I would be better off putting back in exactly what came out. He can sell me a Diaphragm for 48$ but I have never disassembled and repaired a speaker. Is this difficult ? Special tools ??
I will be working on it later. I have to check the output for DC first. Make sure the amp didnt go as well.

[ProSoundWeb Community]