Elio
Student Of The Blues
I have been thinking of buying a Shure SM57 for mic'ing one of amps and came across a non-working one on Reverb which I bought for $20. My thinking was that even my mediocre soldering skills would be sufficient to repair whatever broken wires I found. I easily fixed the one broken wire I found but it turned out that the capsule was also damaged, which is well-beyond my soldering skills. I could have replaced it with a $5 replacement capsule from China but decided to go for the real thing.
It turns out that Shure has a really good flat-fee service policy that allows you to return almost any broken product and get a brand new replacement. For an SM57, the, the cost was $60 (which includes shipping), which together with what I paid for mine, is still about $20 less than buying one new. I sent in the mic and then received a notice that the new one was shipped to me. I thought I might have misread something because I had not paid anything, so I called to ask about it. It turns out that the mic I had bought for $20 and sent in was still under warranty, so they sent me a brand new replacement at no charge.
What impressed me was that I had obviously opened it up and un-soldered and re-soldered several connections to see what another capsule sounded like. Despite the fact that I really wasn't that neat and clean putting it back together and that the prior owner had stripped the set screw for the XLR connector, they sent me a free brand new replacement with no questions asked.
So, as a heads-up for anyone having problems with a Shure product, check out their service and repair page for the flat-fee "repair" pricing -- which really consists of replacement with a new product. Had I not stumbled across someone mentioning that on a discussion forum, I wouldn't have known anything about it.
It turns out that Shure has a really good flat-fee service policy that allows you to return almost any broken product and get a brand new replacement. For an SM57, the, the cost was $60 (which includes shipping), which together with what I paid for mine, is still about $20 less than buying one new. I sent in the mic and then received a notice that the new one was shipped to me. I thought I might have misread something because I had not paid anything, so I called to ask about it. It turns out that the mic I had bought for $20 and sent in was still under warranty, so they sent me a brand new replacement at no charge.
What impressed me was that I had obviously opened it up and un-soldered and re-soldered several connections to see what another capsule sounded like. Despite the fact that I really wasn't that neat and clean putting it back together and that the prior owner had stripped the set screw for the XLR connector, they sent me a free brand new replacement with no questions asked.
So, as a heads-up for anyone having problems with a Shure product, check out their service and repair page for the flat-fee "repair" pricing -- which really consists of replacement with a new product. Had I not stumbled across someone mentioning that on a discussion forum, I wouldn't have known anything about it.
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