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MGR/Erik Johnson « Line 6 Spider 112 »
Published on 01/23/03 at 15:00Mainstream Music in Oshkosh, WI.
It has many features, including chorus, flange, reverb, distortion, amp styles, etc.
On the outside, the unit appears sturdy and well-made.
My roommate purchased a Line 6 Spider 112 amp just over a year ago (~$550). One day, I turned on the amp, and the lights came on, but no sound came out. My roommate took it to a service dealer, who in turn sent it in to Line 6. About 4 weeks later, it came back with a receipt with this scribbled- "Main board fried - new one $350.00."
Now granted, it was just past the year of warranty, but this is no way to keep customers (and prevent them from trash-talking your product online). From what I have heard, Line 6 is gaining a reputation as not being reliable, too. I mean, how many guitar amplifiers DIE after just ONE year? If you look around, you will see plenty of amps that are 20+ years old, going just as good as the day they were made. And this amp was well taken care of and was NOT cranked when it stopped working. In my opinion, Line 6 should have replaced the board without any fuss.
Seeing as the amp is basically dead, I decided to take it apart to find out what the deal was. After getting the main board out, which measures about 16" x 2", I noticed that the board looked nowhere near as complicated as a decent computer motherboard, which you can get for, say, $90. (Much more R&D probably went into the computer motherboard, too.)
After briefly examining the board, I noticed that there was some charring around a lead on one of the circuits. After doing a search online, I found that the chip is a 30 watt amp commonly used in home stereos. Seeing that I have a small background in electronics, I decided to order some of these chips online and see if I could fix the amp. I purchased 3 of them (for when it blows next time) for $3.80 each.
It really makes you wonder what Line 6s intentions really are. Rather than trying to keep a customer (which they need, more and more, it seems), they would rather have you shell out another small fortune for a $3.80 chip and an hour of labor to fix the dang thing. And you know that Line 6 buys in bulk and doesnt even pay that much for the chips. If a $3.80 chip can fix an amp that Line 6 said was fried (and new one is $350), what does that say about Line 6 as a company, not to mention its products?
Erik
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com
It has many features, including chorus, flange, reverb, distortion, amp styles, etc.
On the outside, the unit appears sturdy and well-made.
My roommate purchased a Line 6 Spider 112 amp just over a year ago (~$550). One day, I turned on the amp, and the lights came on, but no sound came out. My roommate took it to a service dealer, who in turn sent it in to Line 6. About 4 weeks later, it came back with a receipt with this scribbled- "Main board fried - new one $350.00."
Now granted, it was just past the year of warranty, but this is no way to keep customers (and prevent them from trash-talking your product online). From what I have heard, Line 6 is gaining a reputation as not being reliable, too. I mean, how many guitar amplifiers DIE after just ONE year? If you look around, you will see plenty of amps that are 20+ years old, going just as good as the day they were made. And this amp was well taken care of and was NOT cranked when it stopped working. In my opinion, Line 6 should have replaced the board without any fuss.
Seeing as the amp is basically dead, I decided to take it apart to find out what the deal was. After getting the main board out, which measures about 16" x 2", I noticed that the board looked nowhere near as complicated as a decent computer motherboard, which you can get for, say, $90. (Much more R&D probably went into the computer motherboard, too.)
After briefly examining the board, I noticed that there was some charring around a lead on one of the circuits. After doing a search online, I found that the chip is a 30 watt amp commonly used in home stereos. Seeing that I have a small background in electronics, I decided to order some of these chips online and see if I could fix the amp. I purchased 3 of them (for when it blows next time) for $3.80 each.
It really makes you wonder what Line 6s intentions really are. Rather than trying to keep a customer (which they need, more and more, it seems), they would rather have you shell out another small fortune for a $3.80 chip and an hour of labor to fix the dang thing. And you know that Line 6 buys in bulk and doesnt even pay that much for the chips. If a $3.80 chip can fix an amp that Line 6 said was fried (and new one is $350), what does that say about Line 6 as a company, not to mention its products?
Erik
This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com