Prymaxe Vintage sucks, but let's talk about food too! :)

[Chankgeez]

I deleted Prymaxe emails months ago due to the constant spamming, not that I don't do business with them. Though there have been 3 times where I've re-signed up for the email to see if they're running a coupon code and each time I've literally gotten a sale % email within 24 hours. Then I unsub again until next time.

I've done the same thing. Yeah, they're totally spamming. I don't need to be reminded every damn day how they'd like to part me from my money.

[Jwar]

I don't mind the spamming. I do enjoy buying things at a discount, especially when they are sooooooo expensive. I mean I saved 50 bucks off of a B7K. That's a great savings! I appreciated the savings. It helps me because I can't afford the extra 50 bucks sometimes.

That being said, I buy only certain items from Prymaxe. If I wanted something from an ILF builder, like Tom, Ryan or Brian, I'd much rather buy from them. That has nothing to do with the savings. It has to do with the experience of dealing with these guys. That's just a few of course there are others.

If I'm buying a Bogner pedal, I'll take the discount or Source Audio...etc.

I wasn't meaning to bash Prymaxe with my post. I do like them, like I said earlier. I'm just pissed that they didn't use a fucking box. USPS gives them to you for free. There is no excuse other than laziness. If I were buying a used pedal, I wouldn't care as much. New and from a dealer, I expect more.

[goroth]

Source audio... Haha

[behndy]

lol. i actually LOVE their BEF. the Multiwave has some interesting weird noises in it. and the Hot Hand is FUN.

really nice guys too.

[goroth]

Yeah, they seem like good dooders, with some good ideas and the product design of skills of a drunken fruit bat.

[goroth]

[DarkAxel]

Well said, the thing is...

when there's a dealer who sells the same shit for 40, why would I buy it for 50?

And you can say "because you want the business to survive"
and then I say "yeah, that's an honorable idea, but no one cares about the big picture, everyone wants his shit as cheap as possible" (of course in balance with quality)

human nature I guess?

I, for example, would rather buy it for 15% less, because in the end, EU is going to fuck me over another 20%, so this way I can at least compensate a bit ... So as much as i'd like to play this game right, I simply won't because of the money

You wouldn't buy it for $50! That's the crux of the entire principal.

See above.

yeah, but then it's just inevitable which sucks didn't want to oppose, i agree, I just kind of feel bad now when i imagined it

I don't buy effects new anyway... don't have the cash for it... but i love to at least windowshop at prymaxe knowing that it's more reachable for me

[behndy]

lol. oh GAWD they stuff is.... interesting looking. not a design i dig on.

but yah. i like that they try new stuff and a few of their things i dig a lot.

[Holy Schnikes]

Yeah, they seem like good dooders, with some good ideas and the product design of skills of a drunken fruit bat.

This. Their pedals are straight horrifying to look at, aesthetics are pretty much laughable like someone is playing a great big joke!

That said, I own their dual expression pedal, great value, functions flawlessly, and doesn't look totally ridiculous.

[JuJo]

I have sworn off Prymaxe twice now, and stupidly returned, only to have my hard feelings confirmed again almost instantly. Right now I wouldn't say I'm sworn off them, but I'm in no hurry to give them my business.

First was the pedal with the faulty footswitch (not their fault) I payed to ship this back to them. I was then refunded the sale price of the pedal (no shipping), without word. (I had asked for the pedal exchanged) After emailing them to ask, I was told to go back to the site and order again. I sent another email to explain I had now paid to ship the pedal twice and wasn't happy with their solution. i was given a $20 off coupon. I then sent a rather angry email saying I bought the pedal at $30 off and wasn't going to take their $20 off coupon AND pay shipping again. I told them where to put it, and then came the ass-kissing "we'll do it right" emails. I then bought this pedal straight from the dealer. (after about $50 to ship back and forth to Prymaxe)

My nicely finished Algal Bloom that came wrapped once in bubble wrap and dumped in an otherwise empty shipping box to bounce around for a few hundred km before making it to me. No individual box for the pedal. I know Tom sends their pedals to them in individual boxes with the name and finish of the pedal handwritten on them. somehow the pedal was unharmed.

My FrantaBIT wrapped once in bubblewrap and jammed in a shipping envelope also somehow survived mostly unscathed. Though it's impossible to tell whether some of the markings are from the etching or scraped off during shipping.

A few emails sent to customer service were responded to in a very rude and dismissive manner.

The pedals I bought before New Year's went missing when shipped. (I think USPS botched it, but why you send pedals to be shipped after 4:00 pm on New Year's Eve is absolutely beyond me) When I emailed them a month later to ask I was told "we had to wait on a pedal, we shipped it yesterday" six weeks later I asked again, they said "we had to wait on a pedal, we shipped it yesterday" . This time it actually showed up and I was very grateful for not losing $300 on the deal. 2 individual pedal boxes, jammed in a shipping envelope with no bubble wrap to protect them somehow made it in tact.

Anyway, I'm not they type to send angry emails to customer service, but Prymaxe has received several from me (all justified), and if I buy from them again, it is most likely because I can't find the pedal anywhere else.

My service from Prymaxe has been a slow decline to the point where I feel the next pedal I buy they may just try to throw it to me... I have given them thousands of dollars in the last year as well

-also, there are other crappy exchanges and emails, but this post is long enough

Enjoy the sales while they're available, and don't be shocked when that radical discount company mysteriously shuts down.

Edit:
I really don't like to air my dirty laundry in public, either, and If you've had good experiences with Prymaxe, by all means, make your own decisions, but I feel people should know that things aren't always as great as they seem...

[Bellyheart]

I can't believe they are shipping without the box. Going down hill.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Yeah that sucks to hear, the only thing I've ever bought from them was packaged ok. There was no tracking once it left the US but I guess that's more the fault of whoever handles their shipping than them. Seems like they're pretty inconsistent rather than going downhill because this was in jan/feb this year.

[transients]

I think the constant sales damage the mom 'n pop shops that take the risk of actually stocking brands that aren't majorly known, like boss, ehx, digitech, etc... In the shop I work at, a lot of people will come in interested in hearing a pedal in reality (rather than youtube vids) with their guitar and amp, and I'll take my time out of doing setups and repairs to sit there and help them hook everything up, switch between different pedals and offer my expertise to help them get the sound they want. Then sometimes they test out a pedal and be like "YEAH MAN THIS IS AWESOME THANKS SO MUCH FOR HELPING ME FIGURE OUT WHICH FUZZ I LIKE" then they leave without buying anything and probably go home and order on prymaxe/PGS to avoid sales tax (around an extra 9% here in california) and get a ~15% discount on top of that.

I can already see why most small shops don't stock a lot of smaller pedal brands given that pedals are expensive, take space, move slowly, and don't generate much profit, but to stack competition with internet companies who don't charge sales tax and constantly have 10-20% off sales is just brutal. Maybe that makes it easier for pedal companies to have one big dealer to ship to and deal with rather than a bunch of smaller shops, or maybe it damages them because they might have more small shop dealers & therefore more dealer orders if places like prymaxe and pgs didn't exist, I honestly don't know.

However, I have ordered from Prymaxe & PGS and I was very happy with their service and the all-around experience, and even going through a return with PGS was quick and painless (although why they didn't catch the pedal's footswitch being completely broken off before they shipped it is beyond me). They're great because they're so big that they can afford to take risks stocking brands like LAL and MASF and other stuff that is just really hard to find and probably wouldn't get stocked by many smaller mom/pop shops.

So in the end, i think it's a give/take sort of thing, and the videos that prymaxe and pgs make really drum up the hype about smaller brands which sometimes helps smaller shops like the one i work at by creating demand for smaller pedal brands. It really makes my day when i help a customer who knows very little about pedals test a bunch of things through his gear, and he buys 3 or 4 of Earthquaker's pedals at once because we're both amazed how awesome they sound through his rig, then i get to tell my boss it's time to order more EQD. then ordering from EQD is super easy compared to dealing with companies like Roland(BOSS) who make it such a pain in the ass to be a dealer. Then seeing the growth of a company like EQD makes ILFers like us happy because they make more new awesome pedals. The circle of pedal life.

Whenever possible, support your nearby mom n pops, especially if they stock the same pedals prymaxe/pgs/other internet companies do. If they don't, go in and try to convince them to! It's worth the extra $10-20 that discount would save you to try the pedal before you buy it! Otherwise you'll just be losing that money and your time when you find out it doesn't sound like it does on the internet and you've decided to flip it. But internet dealers do have their place when it comes to harder-to-sell brands like MASF (which are pretty hard to sell for a smaller shop).

/endrambling

[DarkAxel]

Yeah that sucks to hear, the only thing I've ever bought from them was packaged ok. There was no tracking once it left the US but I guess that's more the fault of whoever handles their shipping than them. Seems like they're pretty inconsistent rather than going downhill because this was in jan/feb this year.

exactly the same experience... bought a Pharaoh, shipped fast and well packed, no problems... and I've experienced non-functional USPS tracking outside of US numerous times, so that's not an issue for me

bummed to hear that they're messing up lately

[JuJo]

The shipping thing is definitely hit and miss. More often than not, things are packaged properly (though I would say 2 out of 3 times is an optimistic estimate). But the times it's not I honestly feel quite insulted that this is they way they handle hundreds of dollars of my money. I honestly wonder whether they may have spit on it in some occasions.