Elektron's repair service

PeterHanes · 2014-01-19T05:00:03.000Z

I know that a few people have been dissatisfied with Elektron’s warranty policy on the Octatrack and I sympathize entirely with their plight, but I thought that I would use this thread to describe my experience with Elektron’s warranty service and describe what I learned about the process, in case this is useful for other people.

I bought my Octatrack new from a retailer about 2 years ago, and it worked perfectly until recently. One day in late November I switched it on and found that it did not wake up. That is, the display screen lit up but no graphics appeared, no LEDs switched on, and it would not boot into Demo Mode or to the Early Startup Menu. Changing the power adaptor and CF card had no effect.

So, it was clear that it needed repair. I contacted the retailer by email and they suggested a couple of things (like try a different CF card) that would no effect, and they eventually told me that I should contact Elektron. I had already created a support ticket with Elektron, but it took them 11 days to get back to me (I guess this was exactly the time when the AK was launched) to suggest that I try a different power supply (which I had already done). After another week and suggesting that I contact the retailer, Elektron support gave me the instructions for getting the repair under warranty performed.

Now things started moving. I’m in Canada, so Elektron suggested that I contact their US office (in California) to do the repair. The US office immediately sent excellent and detailed instructions for returning the Octatrack to them, including how to avoid (legitimately) any import taxes. I sent the Octatrack on 22 December and they sent it back on 9 January (well within the forecast timeframe of 4 weeks) by UPS Standard service. It took 8 days to get back to me.

The repair summary was “cleaned ribbon connector and reattached cable” and took no more than half an hour. Maybe I could have done that myself, but I didn’t want to void my warranty. For all I knew, it could have been completely fried inside.

So, thanks to the problem occurring within Elektron’s three-year warranty period, I got my Octatrack resuscitated for the price of one-way shipping to the US office. Now, to try it out…

Lessons:
1 A three-year warranty is a valuable part of purchasing an Elektron instrument.
2 Keep the original box for the instrument - it will be useful to have.
3 Register your instrument with Elektron.
4 Create a support ticket as soon as you know that there’s a significant issue.
5 Support can be slow at times, but they will get to you eventually.
6 The US repair centre knows what it’s doing.

sicijk · 2014-01-19T08:31:06.000Z

Same was for me with my OT.
Dont remember actually how many days…but everything was smooth and nice!

and i had got an encoder replaced and some un-stickied trig-buttons

MichalHo · 2014-01-19T09:57:08.000Z

I had one of the broken headphone-out OTs. (Crackling, eventually no signal)
Return time was two weeks (sweden-switzerland), it seems the whole board was exchanged, but cannot confirm.
Excellent and fast servicing job, whatever the cause of the problem was.

secretmusic · 2014-01-19T12:58:42.000Z

For all it’s worth, I buy all my kit from a friend at DV in London.
If anything goes wrong, I bring the kit back to him, he replaces it and deals with the rest.
I haven’t found a better way to operate up till now.
My first OT was defective after a week, the trigs started popping out. A quick trip to the shop, and an hour later, I had a new OT. It makes sense to buy from shops when you get this kind of service. I would advise anyone to make good friends with someone at a well stocked music shop