This is unfortunately a bit of a sad story. I recently had one of the buttons on the chromatic keyboard of my A4 fail; some sort of mechanical failure.
I was directed by Elektron to contact Audio Chocolate. This was the first hiccup; they don’t respond to emails. They just don’t. I ended up ringing them in order to arrange a repair. They in turn pointed me back to Awave — the company I bought the machine from — then in turn to Technical Workshops.
So right from the get go I was getting something of a run-around. Nonetheless the repair was arranged and I sent the unit to TW in Melbourne.
It took them roughly four weeks from receiving the unit until they repaired it. That’s a bloody long time for something so simple.
I turned the machine on for the first time last night. While superficially TW appear to have fixed the problem with the button — it doesn’t look broken any more — they’ve managed to break the A4. It makes no sound. Not via the stereo outs or the headphone outs. As you might imagine, I’m pretty angry. Sending a machine for a minor repair and getting it back broken is the absolute opposite of what you want with a warranty.
I’m waiting for TW to get back to me about fixing this.
In the meantime, I needed to vent and thought I might give any other AUS Elektron owners a bit of a heads up.
That is really shoddy work I’ve had stuff repaired directly by Awave before and they’ve been good.
Recently I noticed “TW” is the official repair shop, which I thought was kinda weird. Hopefully this type of poor workmanship is a one off, and not a regular occurrence.
Fking bummer. Broken pieces of gear actually make my stomach hurt.
Definitely check on that power supply. That’s how the machine acted the couple of times I accidentally used my Machinedrum/Octatrack power supply (Until I finally labelled them).
This has also happened to me a few times while just turning the A4 on. Turned it off, then on again and it was fine. Some kind of glichy power up. Have you tried a reset yet?
The bright side is, I’m sure Elektron will make this right for you.
I’m using the power supply provided with the A4 — I pulled it out of the box as returned from TW. I’ll double check to make sure that it’s the right one. If it’s something as simple as that I’ll be glad.
Mayhaps this issue isn’t down to anything TW did or did not do; in which case I’ll beg forgiveness for blaming them. It’s just my first, visceral reaction to getting back a busted machine is “WTF MATE”.
@lofi My experience with Elektron support is always great, so regardless, I’m sure this’ll get sorted out one way or the other.
i am seriously sorry to hear from your terrible experience… buying the AR directly form Electron will hopefully eliminate few of those warranty 3rd party problems … hope things turn out well for you in the end bro!
I don’t believe you can buy direct from Elektron if you live in Australia, they make you go through the local distributors.
Thankfully NZ lets us buy direct
lofi is right, this happens when you plug in the wrong power supply. Check that it is an Elektron PSU-3 power supply. If you have any issues please contact our support and we’ll help you to sort it.
Thank you all for your kind comments and suggestions. I’ve verified that I am indeed using the correct power supply. I’ve also done a factory reset as some have suggested. Unfortunately the problem persists, so it looks as if it’s back to get repaired yet again! Bummer.
I’ve had stuff repaired directly by Awave before and they’ve been good.