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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Product Reviews => Topic started by: Nathan Riddle on June 30, 2017, 02:07:41 PM

Title: JBL customer service & SRX835p review?
Post by: Nathan Riddle on June 30, 2017, 02:07:41 PM
Not sure if 'reviews' is the best place to put this. But seems somewhat appropriate.

I love my JBL SRX 835p's they sound great and work well with my Danley subs. Every time I turn them on they make me grin with how good they sound.  :-*

Customer Service:

Sadly, I had an amp module failure at the beginning of a week long gig. It is well within warranty, (bought Feb-2016). [There are 3 warranties, 2-years cab, 3-years amp, 5-years speakers]. I was able to arrange QSC KW153's as replacements.

I wanted JBL to overnight me a replacement amp from somewhere for an in-the field replacement. Seemed like a simple request. I'd ship the broken amp back to them, they figure it out and have a refurbished amp available for resale somewhere else.

Sadly, their policy is to not allow customer repair or part replacement (I get it, MI-crowd level gear so MI-level treatment). I stated my qualifications and calmly insisted on something. Went up the management until I spoke with Gonzalez, Marlon Customer Service Parts Administrator.

I stressed that it failed mid-gig; it was a week-long gig, and I needed something done now as all repair centers in my area are 2-months out in repair work (and this is true, QSC amp fix was 2-months out). So having my mains down for an entire two months wasn't a good plan.

Eventually, after all that and going to his manager they worked out a solution where they'd ship me an amp module and I'd ship mine back. They were 'worried' that something in the speaker would cause it to fail again after getting the new amp module (right...sure...)

Great, we're finally nearing the end and I can get back to work :P Oh wait! the amp modules are out of stock  :(
So he talks to his manager again and they okay to ship an entire unit to me and I ship my bad unit back (at my expense ~$150, understandable).

Well that's great and all, but I really wanted this fixed for this gig. Expedited shipping would be at my cost to get it here and it'd only be there for 2-days of the event.  :-\
My only other option was waiting for a repair of my broken amp module. ~free

I debated on what to do, but eventually went with getting the new unit and shipping mine back because I'd for sure have a working pair within a week instead of waiting for repair company to get my amp back in 2 months.

All-in-all a pleasant conversation and if you don't get mad and keep working with them and suggesting things on your end, but remain firm in your resolve you might end up in a better than suck situation :)

Props to the JBL team for taking care of me.

The Review:

This is not about QSC/JBL reliability; I've had QSC amps fail on me on the K/KW series multiple times; JBL/Crown amps...etc. They are all the same.

-835's sound better than the 153's for all the reasons that have been discussed previously during their introduction (compression driver throat, FIR filtering, better limiting/DSP, etc). This is a listening test that confirms specifications.

I was able to 'practically' A/B the JBL SRX835p vs QSC KW153. And you can easily tell the differences. Even at very low volume.

By 'practically' what I mean is I've been mixing on the 153's the past few weeks and have learned them a bit. I have also mixed on my 835's a good bit.

I had the JBl's going by themselves for some light setup music and with playback I immediately remembered why I love them so much.

Then the amp module failed and only 1 JBL was running, we grabbed the set of 153's to fix and once those were up and running I shut of the JBL.

After mixing for the week, my subjective experience is that the 153's don't sound as good when loud; and the bass response is lacking (kick doesn't sound as defined).

Objectively, their pattern control isn't good and the FR isn't even when walking the pattern.

Now this is still being nitpicky and you can have great mixes on either speaker system. I just can have better/louder mixes with my JBL's  ;D