Great experience with EVH customer service (Howard Kaplan)

rpurdue

Member
Just wanted to give credit to Howard Kaplan. Howard is the designer of the 5150 III heads (I believe the 50 watt). I have a 100 watt model and was having troubles biasing it correctly. I came across Howards email and shot him off an email detailing my issues. I really didn't expect a response but Howard replied within the hour. Not only did Howard take the time to email back offering suggestions he also offered to Skype or FaceTime to walk me through troubleshooting! In the end, it was just a faulty DMM but regardless i was very impressed by Howard and the people at EVH. I've had some big name boutique amps that didn't offer comparative service.
 
Couldn't agree with you more. Howard was extremely helpful to me as well. Went above and beyond expectations. Was having an issue with my early serial number 100 watt freezing up on me. He actually let me send the unit to him at Fender at no charge. Went over it with a fine tooth comb, retubed it (pre and power tubes) biased and did a fix for a known channel switching issue in early models and sent it back all at no cost to me. Can't say enough about Howard and the Fender customer service dept. First class.
 
victim5150":97cvft2l said:
Couldn't agree with you more. Howard was extremely helpful to me as well. Went above and beyond expectations. Was having an issue with my early serial number 100 watt freezing up on me. He actually let me send the unit to him at Fender at no charge. Went over it with a fine tooth comb, retubed it (pre and power tubes) biased and did a fix for a known channel switching issue in early models and sent it back all at no cost to me. Can't say enough about Howard and the Fender customer service dept. First class.

Wow! That's awesome! I'm happy that it didn't go that far in my case. Within the last year i've had two boutique $4000 plus amps that were hand made in Canada and VERY poor customer service. After both those experiences i'll be sticking with my 5153 now i think thanks :)
 
I have to say this is great to hear. You mostly hear the bad stories. I also like the fact that the schematics are posted on the evh gear web site they rant trying to hide anything with these amps. I have the 50 watt 5150 III, and the 212 cab. I have been thinking about a Wolfgang standard hard tail as well. I am not a big EVH fan, but the quality, and service is awesome, and the Wolfgang standard has all the features I want in a guitar, ss frets, conical radius fret board, maple neck etc.
 
rpurdue":1twae4hc said:
victim5150":1twae4hc said:
Couldn't agree with you more. Howard was extremely helpful to me as well. Went above and beyond expectations. Was having an issue with my early serial number 100 watt freezing up on me. He actually let me send the unit to him at Fender at no charge. Went over it with a fine tooth comb, retubed it (pre and power tubes) biased and did a fix for a known channel switching issue in early models and sent it back all at no cost to me. Can't say enough about Howard and the Fender customer service dept. First class.

Wow! That's awesome! I'm happy that it didn't go that far in my case. Within the last year i've had two boutique $4000 plus amps that were hand made in Canada and VERY poor customer service. After both those experiences i'll be sticking with my 5153 now i think thanks :)

Do tell.... Can't be a Peters....
 
Wasn't a Peters. I've had a Peters in the past and i thought James was very helpful and builds a killer amp.
 
....if I remember how the story went...

Lord Tone Queen(oops,,,KING) had issues with his 50 watter.
They sent him a brand new one...no charge.
 
GuitarGuyLP":2g9l3vui said:
I have to say this is great to hear. You mostly hear the bad stories. I also like the fact that the schematics are posted on the evh gear web site they rant trying to hide anything with these amps. I have the 50 watt 5150 III, and the 212 cab. I have been thinking about a Wolfgang standard hard tail as well. I am not a big EVH fan, but the quality, and service is awesome, and the Wolfgang standard has all the features I want in a guitar, ss frets, conical radius fret board, maple neck etc.

I picked up a Wolfgang last week and i'm having trouble putting it down. Great guitar! However, try before you buy. I had to play a lot of them before I found one without a shitty fret job.
 
John4021":2mtw32x5 said:
....if I remember how the story went...

Lord Tone Queen(oops,,,KING) had issues with his 50 watter.
They sent him a brand new one...no charge.
You are correct sir! Not only that but he spent an hour on the phone with me...on the 4th of July!

Just a super cool guy!
 
Something that's so important and rarely discussed about amps... how you get treated after the purchase! Glad to hear EVH stands behind their product, that shoots it up the list of amps I'd like to try.
 
Stone Heavy Sound":2i6zzcxr said:
Something that's so important and rarely discussed about amps... how you get treated after the purchase! Glad to hear EVH stands behind their product, that shoots it up the list of amps I'd like to try.
Exactly! And i'm not even the original buyer! That makes it even more cool.
 
Stone Heavy Sound":l8a0qcci said:
Something that's so important and rarely discussed about amps... how you get treated after the purchase! Glad to hear EVH stands behind their product, that shoots it up the list of amps I'd like to try.

I've not had a problem with mine (let's hope I didn't jinx myself), but the fact that THE man offered to help you... ACES.

SHS, don't try but BUY the 5150 iii as it is a VERY capable amp. The only piece wanting is on the 50 watt head would actually be a separate set of controls for bot the blue and the green channels, but there are ways around that so that the awesome tones flow forth!

I had a similar experience with Genz Benz. Jeff Genzler called me about a question I had on my El D 100, the amp was like 4 years out of warranty at the time and he's talking tubes to me for 45 mins!

Derek
 
rpurdue":1md29nmx said:
Stone Heavy Sound":1md29nmx said:
Something that's so important and rarely discussed about amps... how you get treated after the purchase! Glad to hear EVH stands behind their product, that shoots it up the list of amps I'd like to try.
Exactly! And i'm not even the original buyer! That makes it even more cool.

True dat! The amp I sent in I bought used. It had a unique problem that Howard wanted to look at first hand.
 
Howard was instrumental (no pun intended) in helping be trouble shoot an amp that had been drop shipped for an endorsee and was DOA.
What I saw in the chassis did not match the online schematic.. he was familiar enough with the circuit that he knew what the issue was
2 mins after he told me what to look for - we had it ID'd.. had it fixed in time for the sound check.
Awesome service - on par with my Suhr and GMW experiences
 
Yep, Howard is good man. He and the Fender support staff. Both helped get on the local techs here and helped them get the amp fixed. They kept putting me off for weeks. A call/e-mail to Fender support and to Howard and they had my local techs jumping. Very pleased.
 
I had the same experience with Howard and Fender Customer Service out of Phoenix. My problem was solved and under warranty. I was considering selling my 5153 50w, but I'm back in love with it thanks to Howard and their team.
 
Just wanted to give credit to Howard Kaplan. Howard is the designer of the 5150 III heads (I believe the 50 watt). I have a 100 watt model and was having troubles biasing it correctly. I came across Howards email and shot him off an email detailing my issues. I really didn't expect a response but Howard replied within the hour. Not only did Howard take the time to email back offering suggestions he also offered to Skype or FaceTime to walk me through troubleshooting! In the end, it was just a faulty DMM but regardless i was very impressed by Howard and the people at EVH. I've had some big name boutique amps that didn't offer comparative service.
I have a question does anyone know what kaolin charges for like amp repair ???
I have a evh 5150 III el34 it's like a 2018ish Model it works fine it has gold lion KT77 tubes I took chassis out when I purchase to make sure the blue channel was not snipped and it's not but I noticed like some brownish stuff on the board and just wanted to send it in to make sure the Caps and everything was good.
 
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