eBay - The Good and the Bad!!
Ok, I lied. There is no good. But I guess that depends on your own personal experience. I've only bought 2 things from ebay so far and one was good, the other bad.
The first was a synthesizer from a canadian in saskatchewan. He wasn't exactly truthful about the condition of the unit but it's not bad. Still functioning just fine after 2 years or more.
The second one was a synthesizer from a guy in Orlando. I guess I should have known. In the listing he said "I'm listing this as "as is" just because I bought it used, but everything is functioning perfectly". Hmmmm. Then after I won the auction (odd that no one else bid on it) he did not respond to any messages. So in good faith, I paid. He sent it, everything worked out just fine.
Except.... a day later it stopped working. After opening it up I see that one of the output jacks is broken. Someone obviously tripped on a cable. The thing appears to work perfectly but there is no sound. The problem is, the broken jack might have shorted something internally and destroyed some components on the mainboard, which is pretty much the entire thing. I dont know if board components can be fixed these days.
Oddly enough, after it stopped working, a few hours later it suddenly started again and worked perfectly for 30 minutes. Then I walked away, came back 30 minutes later and it was silent again.
The German company I have been emailing seems very reluctant to do anything except say "try installing the OS again". Hopefully I can either find a fix, or get them to sell me a new mainboard. Hopefully cheap.
This is fairly important because I LOVE this synth!! It is exactly what I've wanted for a long time now. It's so good that I am already committed to buying another model by the same company. For anyone interested the company is Creamware and this synth is the Pro12, an emulator of the old (OLD!!) Prophet 5 synth of the 70's and 80s. The other one I want is called a Minimax which emulates the classic Minimoog.
So anyway, I'm a bit pissed off with the guy for not being more honest about this thing but mostly I just want it fixed. I'll even pay for it! We'll see what they say and if I can figure anything out myself.
But anyway, on eBay, BEWARE!!!
The first was a synthesizer from a canadian in saskatchewan. He wasn't exactly truthful about the condition of the unit but it's not bad. Still functioning just fine after 2 years or more.
The second one was a synthesizer from a guy in Orlando. I guess I should have known. In the listing he said "I'm listing this as "as is" just because I bought it used, but everything is functioning perfectly". Hmmmm. Then after I won the auction (odd that no one else bid on it) he did not respond to any messages. So in good faith, I paid. He sent it, everything worked out just fine.
Except.... a day later it stopped working. After opening it up I see that one of the output jacks is broken. Someone obviously tripped on a cable. The thing appears to work perfectly but there is no sound. The problem is, the broken jack might have shorted something internally and destroyed some components on the mainboard, which is pretty much the entire thing. I dont know if board components can be fixed these days.
Oddly enough, after it stopped working, a few hours later it suddenly started again and worked perfectly for 30 minutes. Then I walked away, came back 30 minutes later and it was silent again.
The German company I have been emailing seems very reluctant to do anything except say "try installing the OS again". Hopefully I can either find a fix, or get them to sell me a new mainboard. Hopefully cheap.
This is fairly important because I LOVE this synth!! It is exactly what I've wanted for a long time now. It's so good that I am already committed to buying another model by the same company. For anyone interested the company is Creamware and this synth is the Pro12, an emulator of the old (OLD!!) Prophet 5 synth of the 70's and 80s. The other one I want is called a Minimax which emulates the classic Minimoog.
So anyway, I'm a bit pissed off with the guy for not being more honest about this thing but mostly I just want it fixed. I'll even pay for it! We'll see what they say and if I can figure anything out myself.
But anyway, on eBay, BEWARE!!!