The Acme Blog

Props to the Arizona state Legislature for keeping these idiots at bay.

Just removed most of them from the site while we fix a few things with the software to keep inventory counts straight.  I just wrapped up 2010′s year-end inventory and don’t want it to get messed up!  We’ll have prewired Strats and Teles back within a day or two.

Well, it’s that time of year again: inventory time! (No, that’s not really our warehouse.) We’re closing this week in preparation for counting inventory, and will officially reopen on Monday the 3rd.

We’ll still be shipping orders this week, so feel free to place an order, but we won’t be answering email or the phone.  We’ve got a lot of work to do, as we’re in the process of pretty radically revamping our product line. We won’t get it all done this week of course, it’ll take several months to really get things in place, but we need to start off with an accurate inventory count, so the drudgery begins…

Hope you had a great holiday and see you in 2011!

This image was sent to us by a customer, he builds custom guitars with custom paint. I think you can see from the image the superior quality of his paint jobs, we were really impressed!

His name is Mark. If you’re interested in his work you can contact him here.

Betcha haven’t seen one of these. A Tyler with a Strat headstock?  Must be an early one…

Check it out.

Now this is cool. Here is a new take on a DPDT switch, that we think is way cooler than a mini-toggle or a push/pull pot. It’ll do anything that either of them will do, but in a stealthy, low-profile, and non-intrusive way that we’re really excited about. Works with Strats and Teles, as well as any other guitar that uses a control plate or pickguard (we’ll have some for the rear-routed crowd soon). We have some images on the ToneShapers website, but new/better ones will be up soon. You can read about it in some detail on the site, and for more depth, be sure to check out the manual.

Oh, and it’s completely solderless. Great stuff!

Wow!  That just might be the best image of me yet…

We had a customer ask how we deal with fret ends protruding, so we shot a quickie video about it.  I gloss over lots of detail in the videos we’ve done on fretwork, as the material is covered in detail in other places and by other people. But you’ll get the idea.

We’ve just completely updated the ToneShaper for Telecasters!  We’ve changed a few things around to ensure no-hassle installations in nearly any top-routed Tele. New switches and wiring options will make your Tele sound great! Installation is quick and easy, and COMPLETELY SOLDERLESS!

• Better options for Teles with humbuckers, whether in the neck or bridge
• Reversed controls optional: volume at the front, switch at the back
• Easier installation, with a smaller footprint to ensure no hassles
• Customizable tone control, so you can get it to work the way you want
• No batteries!
• Built-in options to address that treble roll-off that comes along when you turn down your volume

Very cool stuff, read all about it on the ToneShapers site.

Where to start?

We used to do a fair amount of business on eBay, and it always seemed like a huge hassle.  We pretty much pulled the plug in 2006 because of this, and have done very little with eBay since. But we’ve decided to do eBay stores for both Acme and Tone Shapers, so I’m resigned to confronting the pain again…

It started when I inadvertently goofed by registering our weborders@toneshapers.com email address under the Acme account. I subsequently deleted it, but it seems that I screwed the pooch anyway, because I was unable to open a new account for Tone Shapers, using that email address, because, as eBay cheerily advised:

“You’re already registered!”

So I chatted with them online (have you ever tried to find a phone number for them on their site?). I opened my chat session at 4:03:53 PM, and eBay managed to join the session at 5:32:00 PM, nearly an hour and a half later. Ouch! Talk about yer customer service…  By 6:15:25 PM, the admittedly-helpful eBay lady had created a new account for Tone Shapers, and with much thanks I bid her adieu and started configuring the account.

I shouldn’t have bid her adieu. Not just yet.

Turns out that Tone Shapers can’t sell on eBay without a seller’s account, and all I had at that point was a buyer’s account. No sweat, eBay allows you to create a seller’s account online. Simply click through a few links, and then eBay will call you via telephone with a 4-digit PIN, and you simply enter this PIN in a field on the webpage, and then they know it’s really you, and they, presumably, give you the account.

But the feature wasn’t working, I got an error message that said:

“Sorry! We’re currently experiencing technical difficulties and are unable to complete the process at this time.”

So I backed up and tried again, several times, but no luck.  The “we’ll call you right now” feature is neat, I’ve seen it now on several websites, and the fembot on the other end dutifully gave me a new PIN each time she called, but unfortunately none of them worked.

The next morning I tried again a few times before their chat department opened at 8:00 AM. Given the previous day’s excitement, I didn’t want to be on hold for 90 minutes, so I thought I’d open a chat session right at 8:00. It worked.  At 8:06 I was next in the queue!

“What browser are you using?”

“Firefox.”

“You should use Internet Explorer.”

*grumble*   “Well, I’m on a Mac, and I use Firefox and Safari, and don’t you think that eBay should support Firefox?  But hey, it turns out I have a Windows XP installation on my Mac, so I do have access to IE. Let me try it.”

So I opened IE and browsed to the “call me at this number”  link to get the call from the fembot, and got this:

“It looks like you’re having problems with verifying your phone number. You’ve tried a few too many times, so you’ll need to wait 24 hours before you try again.”

Ack! I was anxiously wringing my hands at this point. Was I screwed? I had set aside this day specifically to get this eBay thing done, and was hoping that this didn’t mean I was actually stopped for the day. I don’t know if you have much computer experience, but this message was essentially saying “You’ve tried this too many times, so we think you may be a fraudster.  Just in case, we’re going to make you cool your heels for 24 hours. No fembot calls for you.”

*sigh*

I begged and pleaded with her to get me through this. I explained that this was probably just a checkbox somewhere that could be unchecked. I told her the glitch wasn’t mine, it was eBay’s, and I had set aside the entire day just to do eBay, and had had problems the night before. But the pleading fell on deaf ears. Unlike the lady the night before, this one seemed like a newbie, and I think she was in over her head and didn’t know how to fix it, so she just gave me the party line: “The system says you must wait, therefore you must wait.”

Total length of this chat: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

So….  Later that day I decided to try once more. With an eBay store you get phone support, so I went ahead and turned on an eBay store for Acme, thinking that I could then call customer support and speak with someone on the phone about the ToneShaper situation. Even with an eBay store, getting a phone number from eBay is no easy feat. It took me about 10 minutes and it was completely maddening. When I finally got a number, their site presented it to me along with a PIN, saying that the PIN “expires in 15 minutes”.

So I called, and was dumped into the queue. To wait. Again. After 1 hour and 1 minute, someone from eBay answered. Luckily, she didn’t ask for my PIN, which had expired 46 minutes before.

I explained the situation, and she said that she’d work with me to get the seller’s account set up for Tone Shapers, and get the store set up as well.

Great!

So then, just in case, I asked her if she had my number, on the off-chance that we should get disconnected. She had my cell number (I was calling from Acme), but that was fine as the cell phone was in the other room. Then she put me on hold.

I don’t know how long I was on hold. I had retrieved my iPhone and was playing Angry Birds on it, with the Acme phone on speaker. Maybe 10 minutes of dead silence, no music.

Then the click.

Then the buzzing noise that lets you know that you’ve been disconnected.

She never called back.

So, it starts. Welcome to eBay! Today, ironically, I got an email from them:

“Congratulations! You’ve earned a feedback rating of 1,000–earning you a Red Star on eBay! We want you to know how much we appreciate your valuable contribution as an eBay community member. It’s people like you who have helped make eBay… yada yada yada…”

See? They love me!

Serenity Wiring Kit for Stratocaster®

While we’re on the subject of Tone Shaper’s new website, allow me to present the Serenity line of guitar wiring products. They are way, way cool…