Switchblade - Snog, Marry, Avoid?

gearaddict

I'm in an agony of indecision.

I yielded to temptation and bought a Switchblade 100 TSC head since DV247 were knocking them out at half price. I kind of like it. It sounds good. It's quite a big loud thing and I'm not gigging much atm so it feels a bit overkill. I've not played it with the band yet so not sure how it will work there.

I suppose having got over the initial honeymoon I'm questioning whether I really need it in my life and I do have the option of returning it for a refund. It's not a bad amp...I suppose I'm conscious that I've tended not to get on terribly well with patch-based stuff in the past as I do tend to tweak a lot on the fly. And if I hold onto it to see how well it works in the band then I will be past the returns period and have to resort to ebay...although, hopefully by then DV247 will have sold out and I can sell it for pretty much what I paid

I dunno. What would Jesus do?

fastboy

Avoid, avoid, avoid!

I had one when they first came out (in combo form) and it proved to be the most unreliable amp I have ever owned by a country mile. 

I bought it from Denmark Street in London as there weren't many dealers who had them in stock when they came out so every time it went wrong it meant lugging a 30kg combo on the train to London and then getting on the bus.

Amp itself went wrong 3 times in the space of 6 weeks and I had 2 footswitch failures as well. It all stemmed back to the midi just not working, forgetting things and issues with it cutting in and out.

H&K UK (guessing the distributor) couldn't seem to fix it but did admit there was some type of issue so after much complaint from my side Rhodes Music after I sent them a sale of goods templated letter rejecting the amp offered me a store credit to spend in any of their shops on Denmark Street which in fairness I took their hand off for as I needed a reliable amp and not the steaming pile of turd the Switchblade turned out to be. 

I think you can guess from that my suggestion is to not buy one (I wouldn't even personally buy a 2nd hand one for a nominal amount like £100)

PolarityMan

When I was last looking for an amp this really appealed to me but i coudlnt find anywhere to try them so took a pass in the end, from review on reliability it sounds like this might have been a good choice. 

I do think returning is a bit off though, some other poor bugger is going to get a returned amp sold as new.

gearaddict

Quite liked it then?

Did you like the sounds out of it...while it worked? Although I know it's hard to be objective about an amp that has caused you so much hassle.

It's funny, people do seem to have reliability horror stories but a lot of people also seem to find them reliable and they are still in the H&K catalogue so must still be popular, given that they have dropped quite nice amps like the Statesman series. The footswitch was responsible for a lot of issues initially but they have sorted that now by adding a midi plug and providing a removable cable.

fastboy

PolarityMan said:

I do think returning is a bit off though, some other poor bugger is going to get a returned amp sold as new.

Why is it off returning it? I think it's quite the opposite when you spend £950 on a new amp you expect it to work and not pay £20 every other weekend having to lug a 30kg amp through London all the way from Sussex for it to not work after each time it was "fixed" multiple times. I'd actually say I was pretty patient given a total of 5 failures (3 amp and 2 dead footswitches) in such a short period of time. I had a backup Marshall JTM60 combo at the time and that ended doing most of the gigs and rehearsals during that time as the H&K just wouldn't work for more then a few hours at a time.

Obviously I have no control over what became of the amp after my incident but if someone else bought it and had the same issues I'm sure they'd do exactly what I did and return it. Consumer rights exist for a reason so that you don't have to put up with buying faulty goods. 

@gearaddict It was a long time ago so don't really recall a great deal about the tonality (I do remember it didn't sound as good as on the the H&K website) given the amount of time it was in for repair I didn't have a huge amount of time to use it either so couldn't say either way. I do think you will find a lot of negativity about them in forums as it wasn't just me who had a shed load of problems which is why I'd say you'd be better off avoiding it all together is my honest advice. There's so many amps out there these days it's not like you'll ever be stuck for choice. 

gearaddict

I think he was having a go at me, rather than you

I think when amps get returned to the the like of Thomann and DV247 then resell them as B-stock at a reduced price. Mine has been sitting in the house for a couple of weeks and probably been used less than half an hour in total. If I sent it back and someone bought it they'd get an essentially brand new amp for £50 (or whatever) less than the new price. My conscience is fairly clear.

Quite a few times I have bought 'new' gear from the likes of GuitarGuitar and received something that has clearly been well used in the shop. I'd rather buy a B-stock and at least get some money off.

Drew_TNBD

Returning it is fine, if they're offering the 30day return period. I always thought DV247 limited it to 7 days.

gearaddict

Drew_fx said:

Returning it is fine, if they're offering the 30day return period. I always thought DV247 limited it to 7 days.

Yeah, I was surprised tbh. Thought I'd be struggling but they said it was fine straight away and when I checked the website it does say 30 days.