NEW KC VIRUS, SOUNDS GREAT, BUT........!

[Pete 1]

Hi everyone, i`ve just splashed out on a virus kc keyboard and it sounds great, better than my nova but a couple of probs. I bought the unit from turnkey in London and found the pitchbend wheel is a gonna ( although the bend works in cubase Sx) I was playing around with it last night and everything started going out of tune! Evry preset was the same, i also noticed that the midi send/receive bar in Cubase Sx was going mad even when the virus wasn`t being played. I switched the unit off. no cure but then suddenly it was ok. Anyone else had this prob? I also read on this forum about a guy that bought a virus from Turnkey which had scratch marks on it, well mine has too though very minute, still makes you wander how they treat these synths......anyway hope these are just first play teething problems, am taking it back to turnkey to fix the pitchbend wheel.......pete :)

[Merlot]

Welcome

[ten]

Turkney are a ton of shit, I would never buy anything from them. Ive heard more scare stories from them than from Stephen King.

It wouldnt suprise me if your unit is one thats been sold, come back for repairs, and been sold as new again. Seriously they are the worst music shop in the whole of the UK, I do not know how they continue trading the way they do.

ten

[Pete 1]

I agree with you ten that Turnkey are sh***, but due to the virus c being discontinued i had no choice. Would have rather bought from D.village but they had sold out, oh well.......still pleased with it, ..... :)

[grs]

not all patches have pitch bend set up to bend anything

[Hollowcell]

Is the pitch bend OK now though? Sounds like a strange prob for sure. If it does it again, take the sucker back, and then back again if you need to. I'm pretty sure it was DS who bought the KC with scratches that you mentioned - he took his KC back for return many many times before he got one then he was happy with.

Good luck.

And...

Welcome to the board by the way. :D

[jasedee]

~Welcome to Planet Virus~

Hope you sort out your KC issues.....you do have one fine synth there mate, have patience

:)

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Hello Pete.....and welcome to forum.

Im genuinely sorry to hear about your problem with the Virus KC. The guy your referring to about the scratch marks was me. In retrospect....one of the biggest mistakes ive ever made was buying keyboards from Turnkey. Now i dont want to be done for slander....but let me briefly summarise my story:

I got through 4 Virus KC's from Turnkey. 3 of them had massive scratches and knocks across the facia and sides (truly unacceptable for a new ?1429 product)......it litrally looked like Freddy Kruger had clawed it. The other two had some kind of RAM issue whereby notes would cut out after I had struck like only 4 keys. In other words those boards were unplayable unless I reset the machine every 30 secs. As you could appreciate....I was very unhappy....and this was compounded by Turnkeys attitide towards picking up my synth and replacing it. Typically they would arrange to pick up the unit on a monday or tuesday....(and i would take the day off work)...but they often wouldnt get to me by Thursday (on one occasion it was a Friday!). Truly unacceptable. When I complained about this all I got was some other guy at the end of the phone joking to me saying things like 'wow...jeeze thats anoying hehe...dont worry Mr Bolduc....they'll be there tomorrow'. Fucking out of order that kinda attitude.

Well anyways....when I tried to send back my 4th Virus KC.....I also tried to ask for a REFUND. Ah....but guess what......you cant have a refund unless you've allowed Turnkey the opportunity to replace or repair the faulty unit. IN OTHER WORDS......NO MATTER HOW FUCKED OFF U ARE.....NO MATTER HOW SHIT THEIR LEVEL OF SERVICE IS.....THEY WONT GIVE U A REFUND.....COS THEY'LL JUST KEEP SENDING U DUFF UNITS. Read the contract of purchase agreement and you'll see some very small print.

OK, so for my 4th KC I had to conceed and let them take it in for a repair (My request for a refund was falling on deaf ears). OK, so it went off. 3 weeks later I got it back. Hmmmm....I heard something rattling around inside the box. When I opened it up I was greeted by the following site: My Virus KC was totally and utterly fucked. Not only was the internal packaging ripped apart (probably when the stupid engineer tried to repackage my synth he got fed up trying to fit it back into the box)....but there were rattling noises from within my synth. My Virus was totally scratched to shit....2 very large dents in it (from a hammer by the looks of it) + the right wooden side cheek had a massive chip in it (Yeah everyone....I can vouch for the fact the side cheeks are made from chipboard!). Well anyways.....you get the picture dont you Pete. My NEW Virus KC had litrally aged 20 yrs.....it looked like a Gigged DX7...you know the kind that u see on Ebay now and again looking totally wrecked.

Suffice to say....that in the space 12 months I got through 4 Virus KC's....but the magic of owning one was totally destroyed by Turnkey and their lack lustre service. I did finally get a 100% working Virus KC (my 5th one)...but soon after I set about selling it ASAP. I was so fucked off.....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All I can say to you is......I can totally empathise with ur situation....and im very sorry to hear about it. Turnkey, in my opinion are a shoddy outfit and the whole notion of customer service doesnt exist in their ethos. If you have sent your Virus back for repairs I can only hope you dont get it back in a fucked state. If you do....and you complain about it.....thats when you begin to see Turnkey's true colors fly.

Plz keep us posted with what happens.

Goodluck,

DS

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Sorry, I forgot to add. In my opinion its quite possible that Turnkey sell on 'New' Virus KC's when in fact they are customer returns or ex demo's. It would explain my situation......

As of right now.....im synthless....and waiting to buy the VirusTI....from Digital Village.

DS

[ten]

DS, thats one arse story man. I feel for you bro.

One thing though, there are strict trading rules for consumers (in the UK) where if you buy a product and its faulty or damaged in anyway you can demand a refund in a certain amount of time no matter what shitty terms and conditions they have on there agreement, they HAVE to do it, its law, or you can (and should have) take them to the cleaners.

I to have pre-ordered my TI from DV. Never had one problem with them, always amazing service and promt delivery.

I really wish turkey would burn to the ground, its such a shit hole and really taking a lot of UK muso people for a ride. If I ever meet the director/manager I will fucking tell him what a cunt him and his shitty outfit are.

ten

[Pete 1]

Blimey DS, that is a nightmare, i just hope that doesn`t happen to me. I`m actually taking the synth down in person as i don`t trust the post etc. I think the tuning problem is related to my midi interface screwing around as my nova was doing it too! Anyway had a good look round my synth after your story and i got ta admit i t does look spanking new, you can usually tell if it`s been used and the surface scratch is minor, but how the bender could have broke is beyond me.....anyway i probably won`t use turnkey again after your story and i agree with ten in that DV are 100% better for everything. I wish i`d bought my virus from there but it`s my fault for taking too long to decide if i needed one or not! Hope you have a good one with the T1, why did you sell your KC in the end? :)

[Dujenwook]

Hello, I came across this forum while trying to remedy a problem with a Virus KC. The problem is similar to what DIGITAL SCREAMS described: the board will play sounds/patches fine for about 20-30 seconds and then make a loud staticy sound before cutting out completely. The only way to get it to play again is a global initialization, and sometimes even that doesn't work. I've upgraded the OS and all.

It has to be a hardware problem as the synth is brand new, and even screws up when plugged only into power and headphones (Pioneer HDJ-1000.)

The real issue though, is trying to get it repaired/replaced. The unit was purchased from Guitar Center via the internet in October 2004. A gold warranty was purchased along with the unit, but it doesn't go into effect until October 2005, (damned fine-print) so I have to ship it back to Access.

After about 20 phone calls to Guitar Center and the Access distribution center, the only information I have is that apparently Access and Event Electronics (www.event1.com) are somehow tied together. I'm guessing that Access just designs the synths and Event actually manufactures them.

The only phone number that Event has listed on their site rang into voicemail. I sent them an e-mail and am waiting on a response.

If anyone has any info that might be useful I'd greatly appreciate it. It's really a horrid feeling having a $2000 keyboard that I can't use (but that sounded badass for the 20-30 second intervals when it worked.)

[jasedee]

Sorry to hear about your issues dude.......hope you get it all sorted out soon!

Good luck!

:)