Don't buy chinese wah enclosures!!!

[Renegadrian]

I just bought one of those chinese wah enclosure for a friend and customer. 19 euros from aliexpress...

it came with no instructions, it has no backplate, the screws holding the rack are too long, they forgot the felt for the switch, and above everything, the tension block cannot be adjusted!!! how the hell am I supposed to tighten it?! grrrr....

I'll post pictures...

[Renegadrian]

[greaser_au]

The way the pictures look,  a 'ball-end' allen key might do the job  ...   (the perspective distortion from the wide lens makes it hard to tell!)

david

[Renegadrian]

I have to buy that key you suggest, anyway you see that that metal piece that should hold the rubber foot makes impossible to reach the screw with a proper angle (it should be straight...)

[Elijah-Baley]

Thanks for sharing your experience, man.

[R.G.]

Hmmm. China is the fourth largest country in land area, and the single largest country by population. One of every six people living on the planet lives in China.

So is it more accurate to say that the one company/supplier you happened to buy from produces enclosures that don't make you happy, or to say that every wah enclosure from China is bad?

I suspect that 80-90% of all new wah enclosures on the planet come from China, including those sold by the major commercial wah makers. Further, I suspect that it is quite difficult to find any new wah enclosure that didn't come from China if you trace it all the way back to manufacture. Possible, maybe, but difficult.

So what company and what supplier/seller/whatever are you unhappy with? That's more useful.

[Renegadrian]

RG I got what you wrote, let me say I bought a lot of things at aliexpress site, phones, clothing, etc, and I am quite happy about the things I bought. This particular item is a mess to work with...even tho' it's not written, you got no back plate. but yeah the pics don't show backplates so...at the same time, the screws should fit well the holes, but they don't - I had to go to my local Leroy Merlin store and get some screws, and cut them myself as they were longer than needed. They provide the rubber feet but no screws for them. and most important, that screw is unreachable so the whole enclosure is useless...
For the sake of precision, aliexpress seller is Yueqing Fengxing Electric Factory
and this is the listing
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Wah-Enclosure-Guitar-Effect-pedal-box/1361355273.html

Again, for the records, I encourage any cry baby owner to post a pic of their wah expecially of that screw that is in my picture...can you reach that screw with a regular allen wrench?!

For comparison...http://www.mammothelectronics.com/4SWah-Enclosure-p/500-1008.htm
it costs a lot more! You see in the assembly instructions pdf that the bracket that hold the tensioner is quite lower compared to the one I have on my enclosure. This lets you reach the screw easily. Still there are people complaining about that pedal too...

[joegagan]

good points RG.
however, the predominant result that i hear over and over is very similar to the above scenario( this includes a half dozen small to medium size pedal companies) . i agree that knowing the exact supplier and maker would be helpful, but unfortunately the end result will more than likely be the same.

as you mention, it all comes down to how you order, how you spec it, and the followup QC process. i also strongly suspect that dunlop's shells are now made in china, however, just like fender, makita tools and a million other brands, they made sure that the product was built to highest quality standards. it can be done and is done all the time.i have a makita 'skilsaw', made in china that is as good or better than the previous japan one i owned.

the tell for the wah shells is that if you see a screwed in metal ' strap bracket' holding the rack gear as opposed to the classic cast standoffs, it comes from this family of chinese shells that have a history of machining issues, incomplete or ill fitting parts etc. i wish i could tell you there are exceptions but so far i have no happy stories to report. i can't go into specific details on some of them but the stories are bad.

bottom line, unless you are a major player like dunlop and can control the entire process from start to finish ( and i bet  even THEY have their share of horror stories getting it done), the chinese wah shells should be bought with a grain of salt and the knowledge that you will need to probably be ready to do your own fabbing/sourcing to some degree to make it work as a wah.

if one must buy a chinese shell, the eleca from small bear seems the best of the bunch, and especially good considering steve's quality reputation backing it up.

[smallbearelec]

the eleca from small bear seems the best of the bunch...

Thanks, Joe. As R. G. has noted in other connections, Chinese manufacturers will make garbage if that is what you want to pay for. They will also make things to very high standards of quality, if they know that that's what's wanted and expected. I did not know this when I began importing, maybe ten years ago; they quoted a price, and I paid it. I would complain when there were occasional problems with quality, and they would get handled. Because, in my ignorance (?), I never tried to hammer prices down, I think, over time, the sources I buy from never felt that they had to cut corners. As a business model, it has worked out well enough.

The high retail price of the Eleca item reflects the fairly high wholesale cost, freight and duty on 3 1/2 pounds of metal and New York City labor, utilities and taxes. But I rarely get growly e-mails about quality.

SD

[R.G.]

Yep, that is the point.

If you buy purely on price, you have to be prepared for some of your "bets" to fail.

I have friends that have MBA degrees. I try not to hold that against them, and regularly make them mad with the engineering point of view. But I have picked up a bit of the lingo. The MBA set of knowledge includes the term "race to the bottom". In the case of marketing in the West, purchase price has become a huge force, to the point that western businessmen spend entire careers trying to lower product *cost* to maximize profit. The western business world has used "offshoring", starting with Japan, going to Korea, and China in the race to the bottom for product cost.

And get ready for the next race. The Chinese manufacturers are seeing huge wage inflation as they pound their way up the S curve. So Chinese manufacturers in really cost sensitive industries are beginning to offshore *their* work to really, really low-wage places like Vietnam, and increasingly, Africa.   

Western businessmen have convinced Chinese sales entrepreneurs that everything must be sacrificed for lowest cost. It's the single biggest item that the Western consumer demands. The rise of direct sales from Chinese distributors through the various online sales sites has left the semi-technical consumer with the impression that they can get technical items at low prices just by finding the magic, unknown sales site online. Unfortunately, when all you shop for is price, and have no means for examining samples of the goods first, you get disappointed a lot. That's what's happened here. The budget for enclosures did not include any room for throwaway samples to review for quality.

And that's what you get into if you go into buying directly from people you don't know and have no recourse to on the other side of the planet. This should not be a surprise to anyone. If you're going to go buy directly from the wild, wild East, expect to pay for some of the low prices with a lot of work.

As a bit of perspective, Western businesses did not particularly trust **Western** suppliers either. For many decades, IBM maintained a pretty expensive component qualification operation where parts were tested for strict adherence to very, very detailed specifications. This was necessary to ensure reliable parts from USA and other Western manufacturers. Many companies did the same, IBM is just the one I'm familiar with. The component qualification engineers could tell ugly, nasty horror stories about **USA** suppliers. A lot of the shift to Japanese suppliers in the 1980s came for quality reasons as much as or more than price.

So yes, if the buyer of a few golden nuggets shops for price on worldwide low-price sales sites, they will get gold-plated lead nuggets unless they are very savvy and suspicious, and willing to pay in money or work for the research to find them real gold nuggets.

And Small Bear is a case in point. Steve *is* willing to go invest the money in trying a new source of nuggets, and then only selling the products from places that do, in fact, sell real gold nuggets; and to eat the losses when he gets burned.

As you say,

unless you are a major player like dunlop and can control the entire process from start to finish ( and i bet  even THEY have their share of horror stories getting it done)

We have another similar bit of wisdom from the US Southwest. It goes: "if you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch."   

[R.G.]

Oops, simul-post.

[Liquitone]

I have used several Wah enclosures with tension blocks for my vibe builds and none of them had problems with reaching the allen-screw. I've made lots of picture but sadly not from that angle.
The enclosures I used looks like the one from AliExpress, but had a back-plate, a rubber mat with horizontal stripes and aside from the enclosure itself all black hardware. http://www.newtone-online.nl/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=82&products_id=1328 This might be the same one Smallbear has in the shop as it seems to have the same rubber mat and hardware.

[mac]

I use power tools intensively at my constructions sites. Chinese of well known brands are just crap, two turns and they smoke, break into pieces, explode... although I reckon that the chinese supermarket in my block has unbeatable prices and quality

mac

[joegagan]

side note. the chinese made vox wah shells are very good quality. the v847a has the classic chrome treadle/ nice rubber insert, vox letters, all in the classic 67 vox format.

excellent machining:
-small very fine thread machine screws instead of coarser, lesser types.
-alignment of parts very good.

the rack gear is mounted in traditional standoffs, but with cotter pin and spacer holding rack, quite a bit better than the strap mount of the lesser shells.

the main body seems light metal, possibly aluminum. the treadle is heavier steel , probably for the plating. the all black budget v845 model is all metal, but much lighter, presumably all alum.

very light to ship, even the chromey one is under 3 pounds vs the zinc- heavy crybaby which is over 3 pounds.

the bottom plate is 18 ga. steel or thereabouts, a huge improvement over the flyweight alum dunlop plates ( made even weaker with the dumb batt access hole)

nice large feet, but again screws with the china fine thread so not interchageable with the common 6- 32 thread we all are familiar with.

i did have one example that had a crooked treadle when viewed from front, at least 4 degrees out of square, but none of the others i have had were like this. presumed misalignment of the axle drilling on either the base or treadle.  side note on the side note:i saw many 80s and early 90s crybabies also with misdrilled axle holes, but these were out of square when viewed top down.

[joegagan]

another note. one of the biggest problem stories from a mfgr was about the mammoth shells. don't assume anything with any of these. at least with the reputable US sites, you have good backup, but how do you put a price on the inconvenience factor?

[karbomusic]

Chinese of well known brands are just crap, two turns and they smoke, break into pieces, explode... although I reckon that the chinese supermarket in my block has unbeatable prices and quality Smiley

You almost always get what you pay for regardless of who made it. Of course there are exceptions but it's never good to bank on the exceptions. It isn't typically inexpensive to make a pedal that will last a lifetime, same for most everything else. Before I'd blame China, I'd blame the person who called up China and said:

"Can you guys make what I usually make, but dirt cheap?"

"Cheap" is the word they hear and prioritize over everything else. Cutting one corner leads to cutting other corners if cheap is the only driver, and the next thing you know some kid in diapers is making power tools, just sayin.

[joegagan]

I use power tools intensively at my constructions sites. Chinese of well known brands are just crap, two turns and they smoke, break into pieces, explode... although I reckon that the chinese supermarket in my block has unbeatable prices and quality

mac

mac, i know what you are talking about. but my point was specifically about makita, and specifically my experience with one of the their products, having used exact same saw in both japan and china made versions. saw used many hours a day til i retired from construction in '12.

the chinese made one lasted from 07 to '12 with daily use and was as good or better in build than the japan one that i had used prior (only retired due to too many injuries from being dropped by co workers).

harbor freight's chinese made power tools have improved greatly in the last 10 years. they just can't deal with the hassle of too many returns or bad reviews, they seem to keep getting better and better quality out of their suppliers. again, they are a big dog and seem to have their own porch.

[Ice-9]

The saying "You get what you pay for" really holds true here. I have found it so much cheaper to buy a second hand wah just to use the enclosure and I know I am getting a decent quality unit.

[Fender3D]

You get wah you pay for

[Renegadrian]

Sending the enclosure without any instructions is also a big no-no...I followed some assembly guides pdf I found googling...

I then found this image and that made me think...let's try!!!

So i hammered out the pin and screwed that plate the other way around, so the screw has more space...sadly the screw was very long so I had to cut 9mm put of it...still kinda difficult to reach the screw head, so I sanded the hole of that screw a little...now it goes a little towards the bottom and I can finally tighten it. but now the treadle has a small "step" as the screw has more space to wander in that not so circular hole...grrrrr