Thomann Guitar Service Review

Hello there and welcome back to yet another review article for you! This time I would like to provide you with a long-term review of Thoman Guitar Service.

As you may already know, I have been proudly affiliated with Thomann for about 5 years, directing my visitors to them. I’m not doing this only to generate additional income but because I believe Thomann is the best online music store. On top of that, I have been a Thomann customer for a long time and my first purchase was probably in 2012.

Time flies! I have bought and returned so many items from Thomann and been able to gain some experience with how they work. One of the first blog posts that I shared about Thomann was how they were able to stand out among their competitors during the pandemic.

Why Thomann is The Best Musicc Store?

While I was hunting for a Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid PT-7 UV, I had to contact many music stores in Europe as this guitar was not often kept in stock. Thomann was the only company who answered, followed up and delivered my guitar!

However, not every interaction with Thomann was always top-notch. So in this article, I would like to provide you with as many details as possible and as promised keep everything transparent for you and share my Thomann Guitar Service review with you!

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Questioning Thomann’s Guitar Service

My first experience that made me question their guitar service’s knowledge and generic responses happened with my Charvel Pro Mod DK24 Mystic Blue guitar.

As with many guitar players, I’m also triggered by guitar designs, colours and tech specs and constantly up for new instruments to try and eventually keep them in my collection. When I first noticed Charvel Pro Mod DK24 Mystic Blue, I immediately fell for it and purchased one.

I think this guitar was probably one of the best guitar designs ever and I’m still considering getting one of these again! 🙂

Unfortunately, the guitar was covered in dust and came with a paint crack in the neck pocket and most importantly an easily visible neck gap.

As a former guitar tester, I wasn’t shocked at all as these issues may exist with any brand-new guitar. At the end of the guitar, guitars are made by people and people can make mistakes and overlook some minor details as long as they are in the accepted tolerance levels with the manufacturing processes.

To inform Thomann about the state of this brand-new guitar, I sent an email to customer service. They directed my query back to the guitar service.

However, I wasn’t really happy with their answer as they claimed the gaps in the neck pockets are sometimes done intentionally. I don’t think I have ever heard this argument from anyone!

Apart from the mentioned flaws, the D string also started rattling from the nut as it was cut too deep.

Strangely, they offered me a €70 discount on the purchase price and after I declined and returned the guitar, they listed it as a B-stock for €880! 🙂 Mind you, I paid €1035 for this!!!

To be honest, I don’t understand this approach. This Charvel had a lot of issues and one may need to spend some money and time on this and I can assure you that it’s not cost as low as €70.

However, they accepted the returned item and refunded me without any issue. The problem here is the generic answer that the guitar service provided. As I worked in the industry in an identical scenario, I’m very familiar with the generic answers that you can use as a company representative.

For instance, regarding the paint crack on the neck joint, I probably called dozens of customers to inform them in advance and provide them with an option.

Because I saw these paint crack issues countless times with my own eyes, however, I wouldn’t dare to answer a customer that the neck pocket gaps are intentionally made by the manufacturers. Come on!

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Guitar Service Fee

As I always wanted to experience how it would feel to play Les Paul, I was constantly looking for alternatives and wanted to give Epiphone Les Paul Custom Ebony a chance.

However, as I had a slightly disappointing experience with my Charvel purchase, I wanted to make sure that the guitar was professionally tested. So I contacted Thomann and asked if this would be possible.

They responded and provided me with details and the service description for €45 which was pretty good.

I also asked them to restring my guitar with a set of Elixir Optiweb 9 gauge strings, however, they had to warn me that since the gauge is different than the factory strings (10 gauge), this would void the money back.

As I trusted them, I confirmed that I acknowledged this and started waiting for my instrument. The guitar arrived and I was really blown away with the look and feel of it.

However, the first thing I realised was the smell. You may ask what smell. I asked them to use natural oils rather than mineral oils (or baby oil) on the fretboard and they confirmed that they only use natural ones.

I know the smell of products that are sold as natural oils and also baby oil! I think they just used a standard conditioner. Unfortunately, this is not something I can prove to you, but it was there.

I started testing the guitar and noticed a couple of frets having levelling issues. I sent an email to their customer service again, but they advised me to wait for a couple of days so the frets would settle…

Of course, it did not happen. In fact, the guitar started showing more signs of poor testing and additional issues became apparent such as a rattling open G string and also intonation was off. As they requested me to shoot a video, I made a simple cam video and shared this with them.

After I sent this email below, they wanted to check the guitar again so I sent it back. Thankfully, they accepted the return and refunded both the guitar and service fee back to me.

I believe they did test the guitar, restrung and cleaned it. However, as you can see from the video above, there were lots of critical parts of the testing phase that were ignored.

Again, as with the first example, I just got generic responses in the beginning and I was pretty upset. At the end of the day, the only reason I wanted my guitar to get professionally tested was not to have to find a luthier, bring my guitar there, pay, test and bring it back home.

Was This a B-Stock Guitar? We Will Never Know!

The next one was one of the most concerning ones in my opinion. Again, I was checking out the new guitars in the market and trying to justify my next one! 🙂

I came across a very unique guitar by Cort, a G300 RAW model and fell for that too. This time, I couldn’t be bothered with “professional testing” and just thought of sending this back if I didn’t like it.

The guitar arrived safely, however, before opening the box, it was already apparent that something was wrong.

The box was looking pretty old and had Thomann tapes instead of original factory duct tape.

Although I bought this end of 2023, the serial number seemed to indicate that the guitar was a 2022 version.

Weirdly, there was a B-stock Cort G300 RAW available at that time and also the brand new one was out of stock.

As I identified a couple of issues with the guitar, I didn’t even ask for a discount or anything but decided to send this back.

Check out my Cort G300 RAW review here

Although Thomann asked me to send these photos, I was never able to get any response on this topic. They only told me that the B-stocks are typically categorised and sold separately as you can see below.

As I got my Epiphone Les Paul Custom tested by Thomann, the factory box was also sealed with Thomann branded duct tape, so it indicated that Thomann opened this box for testing.

After the refund process was finalised, I took a chance to ask for more info on the possible B-stock guitar that was sold to me. However, I haven’t received any responses since January 2024.

Extended Warranty and PLEK!

As you can see from the experiences I have shared with you, Thomann never left me without proper care and eventually satisfied me as a customer. However, I feel like I want to share my experiences with you as I did with Thomann customer care so they can also improve their services.

This last experience I’m about to share started in a hopeful state, then it turned into a complete disappointment and finally completely resolved!

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If you are a regular visitor, you may already have read my Epiphone SG Custom Ebony review. I got this guitar in November 2021 and I have been enjoying it a lot.

However, after I restrung my guitar in January 2024 and did complete maintenance, I noticed there were a lot of lifted frets on the A string and multiple notes were choking.

I was really upset as this would mean spending more money on a Chinese-made guitar to just make it work as expected. Before I went for that route, I checked Thomann’s T&C on the extended warranty (which is 3 years) and wanted to take a chance.

I prepared this video below and contacted Thomann to find out if the extended warranty would ever cover such issues with guitars.

Note that, the guitar’s action was already set too high with more than usual relief in the neck to see if these would solve the issue. Did not work out.

Fortunately, Thomann wanted me to send the guitar (free shipping). After I sent it, I started waiting for their response. However, I never received anything.

One day, the courier called me and I just realised they already sent the guitar back without any notification or emails. I was excited to see how my guitar was treated.

The first thing I noticed was how dirty the guitar was. I never send any instrument or product back to Thomann (even for service) in this state. As you see from the photos below, it was almost covered in some kind of particles from a spray.

The pickup section was a total mess. It almost looked like all the wax inside the pickups was melted and spread around. Also please notice the fingerprints, grease and gunk all over the guitar.

While warming up my amp, I just checked the papers that came with the parcel and realised they only did a neck and action setup! Proof below, and the test was OK!

Here’s another video that I just recorded after I received my guitar from Thomann.

Weirdly, nothing was fixed but more problems were introduced. Go, compare two videos! Now, I had a lot more choked notes on the D string along with the A string!

I sent them a very heated message, asking if they were messing up with me!

I was really pissed off with the situation because all I wanted was to have a simple answer. “No, we can’t fix structural issues that happen in time with the guitars, go get a local luthier.”

A couple of days later, I received the below response. They apologised and wanted to resolve this for me.

I was expecting just a simple fret levelling, but they went for the extreme and PLEK’ed my guitar!

I was finally very satisfied with their service and just able to get this sorted out within the extended warranty period.

But please be aware that I wouldn’t know if the lifted frets that may occur in time could be fixed with the PLEK service within the extended warranty. Maybe, they just wanted to do their best as I had to go through a lot of mediocre experiences with Thomann recently.

Check out Thomann’s PLEK Services here

So What?

You may ask “So what? Thomann solved all your problems eventually and you are still complaining!“. As I mentioned in the beginning, it is just to keep everything transparent with you and Thomann, and also help them improve their services.

Unlike Sweetwater, Thomann does not run a test procedure for most of the guitars except their in-house brand, Harley Benton Guitars.

I think they should invest in a standard test procedure for every single guitar. I know it costs a lot, however, you will absolutely guarantee that the guitars will be always tested by a professional crew with their name on the checklist.

So even if there’s still a problem with the guitar, you can really point out the issues that you identified and have a conversation about it with the responsible person.

Also, they should definitely make their guitar services way more transparent for the customer. I’m sure many people are not even aware that Thomann provides a PLEK service along with a standard guitar service (paid).

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Why not make these an option in the cart and let people become more aware of the services? I had already known the PLEK service by Thomann but never thought about it before.

My Epiphone SG Custom has become a completely different instrument after the PLEK service and professional setup and now I’m even considering sending my guitars (when needed) back to Thomann for full-blown PLEK service and setup instead of finding a local luthier and paying possibly the same or more.

Thomann also needs to start investing in taking photos of every guitar in stock and weighing them so that customers can choose the one they prefer.

What I realised with Thomann is that they usually use the best-looking ones on their website. My Marcus Miller V8 NT guitar looked completely different than the one on the website. It has an ash body and mine looks like an alder body, with almost no figures at all.

The same goes for the Cort G300 RAW, the one I got was pretty OK but the pictures they used on the product page belong to one with a unique figure.

I also notice this with the Epiphone SG Custom. If you check the product page, you will notice the nice figures on the ebony fingerboard. Mine had a greyish colour on the bony fretboard instead of a completely black colour.

I will definitely keep promoting Thomann as I’m a very big fan of them and will keep purchasing all my gear from this lovely company. I hope they will work on the improvements to their service and provide us with the best of the best online music store experience!

Note that, the videos I shared here are all unlisted. I’m not here to prove they suck all the time and promote these videos. I just added them to this article as proof for you.

I hope you have enjoyed this brutally honest and transparent Thomann Guitar Service review. Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!

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