In my previous two episodes you saw me hide the identity of a local music store and make a snide comment about Chinese sweatshops. I bet you thought I was done. That the rant was over. Well it’s not over! I’m just getting warmed up!! ‘Cause it’s our time, our time down here!!!

Recently our local big box music store (cough, cough, GC) shut down and moved. Before they did they had a sale of all their floor demos and open box inventory. Not long after I started to see a steady stream of one amp in particular. The Fender Blues Junior. People snapped these up as either a light weight back up, or in many cases as their very first guitar amp.

The first one failed a few days after it was purchased and GC stood by their “no returns on sale items” policy. They referred the customer to the local Fender Certified Tech who replaced one power tube with a (used looking) Mesa Boogie EL84. The amp functioned for a few more days and then failed again. That’s when it came to me.

Both power tubes had failed (again?) and it was suffering from the typical burned screen resistors that this amp is known for. All that was easy enough to remedy, but there was something else odd. The power tube board had a cut trace and jumper wire installed. The work was well done and functioning properly, but the amp was purchased “new.” Strange.

That’s when the second amp came in. Same issues. Same weird jumper wire. Then it happened again… and again. These were obviously some sort of in store warranty repair or factory second. I contacted Fender to see if there was some sort of warranty coverage that would help these customers. They responded with a form email that listed the addresses of local Certified Techs, including the one that botched the re-tube and the store that had just closed.

So where does that leave us? Is this really what we want a new guitar player buying their first amp to experience? Can we not make a quality product and provide quality service for it when the time comes? I’m not pretending to have any answers here, but with all that is wrong with the world today can we at least make an effort to not ruin Rock-N-Roll? Now get off my lawn!