Les Korn

[Mike Wig]

Several years ago I had a custom archtop made by Luthier, Les Korn in Tucson, Arizona. After months of collaborating with Les, the guitar arrived. Although the guitar looked pretty from a distance, there were several defects in the finish, the neck was not at all what I had specified and the tone was flat and muddy. I contacted Les right away because he had a 3 day full refund policy. Les argued with me at first and then said he would make the guitar right but I wanted a refund as per his return policy. Years later, Les still owes me over $1,000 and I don't have the time to go to Tucson to take him to small claims court. Any ideas out there?

[desertbluesman]

Can't help with that, but it is a good heads up for the rest of us.

 

Here is what I would do. I would record a song, telling what the guy did for me "exactly" without any anger or bad words about the guy, just detailing honestly what happened, and point out that his return policy can not be trusted. I would also print out flyer's and bring them to your local music stores. Find out if he has any competitors in his area and threaten to write a letter to them detailing his bad business practices. Call the Tucson Better Business Bureau.

 

Remember this; if you have recording gear, you are a record company. And if you have a computer and a printer you are a publisher. If you have the internet, you can be heard and read.

 

Just be careful how you say what you say because you want to get the right response from the listener/reader. You want them to like you, and feel suspicious of the Luthier in question. So choose your words carefully, and point old Les to this thread, and let him know you are warning people about his bad business practices.

[Mike Wig]

Thanks DBM, good info!

[desertbluesman]

Your welcome, hope it helps.

[phazyme]

You are one of many whom unfortunately got taken by Les Korn. His good old boy attitude and his good photography fooled many into buying guitars that were grossly, and I man grossly inferior. One guy that I read about had the fret markers inlaid on the wrong frets. To make a long story short he owes me $6000 for an archtop that I can't use. It took him 3 years of my sending it back (and each time I paid the freight both ways), for him to try to make it right. I finally gave up, and said I want a refund. HE FLAT OUT REFUSED. Blamed my playing on not understanding what a great guitar this was. I took it to a luther to try and doctor it up and his comments are unrepeatable here. My teacher was Jimmy Bruno at the time who said never buy from an unknown- ever! He bet me I wouldn't get my money back and some other choice words for the guitar.

Here is what you still may be able to do. I don't know what the statute of limitations is, but you can get a small claims judgement against him IN YOUR STATE. He won't show up for the hearing, so you win the case. Then you hire an attorney in Tucson to go after him for 50% of the money. They probably will not do it for under a $5000 claim. And the only thing you'll get is satisfaction. And get this: I believe he is out of business. His website and advertising have closed up and he has disappeared. There is justice, my friend, on Internet influence against a blatant, obnoxious, individual who kept the money of many people who could not get it back.

[phazyme]

One more way to repay him for his dishonesty, is to have someone who has an ebay store put up your guitar with many hi resphotos as a serious auction. In other words not bad mouthing, or they would probably remove it. But, in my case, I can put up 100 photos hi res from photobucket in the body of my listing. You put it up for a reasonably price and describe any problems with the guitar complete with photos. A picture is worth a thousand words. Now to list you list it as fixed price listing "good until cancelled" letting the world see his craftsmanship. The only reason I haven't done it yet, and I will, is because every time I see the guitar it makes my blood pressure rise.

[Dannyalcatraz]

In case you missed it:

 

http://www.leskornguitars.com/

http://jkevincrowell.com/wordpress/2009/04/25/les-korn-guitar-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

http://www.harmonycentral.com/products/108777

 

He may indeed be out of business.

[S. Yeti Bigfoot, Esq.]

I'm sorry for your bad luck....but I just gotta ask. I found a few serious complaints just by googling "Les Korn Guitars"....didn't you do any research before you hired this jackleg to build a custom guitar for you?

[Larryz]

Thanks for posting this [warning] info, before more guitar players buy his stuff...

[phazyme]

In answer to the above question, at the time, about 7 years ago, there was no data on him. No reviews. His guitars looked beautiful as he was quite good with a camera. When I ordered the guitar I even had John Benedetto whom I am acquainted with contact him about a certain stain I wanted. He thought the pieces looked good too on the web site. I called Korn and he had this good old boy accent and couldn't be more friendly. And don't you worry, he said- 100% guaranteed. It took him 3 years to send me a piece of junk that he would absolutely no way in hades take back. I was plain stuck and spent $1500 trying to fix the damn thing.

 

After all this my advice is if you really want a jazz archtop (which his was supposed to be), buy a Gibson (the gold standard for arches), and MAKE SURE ITS RETURNABLE. In the end I could have had an L5 for what this cost me. AND ITS UNPLAYABLE.

[Gabriel E.]

Sounds like you're SOL. You could try to sue him in your home state and get a collection agency to try to get some of your money back. But if he's out of business, that's going to be a no-go since his business was probably an LLC or LLP. In which case he has no personal financial responsibility to you whatsoever.

[dvuksanovich]

Man... sorry to hear this sad story... brings a tear to my eye.

[skipclone 1]

Terrible-I have not had anything like this but I often try to find guitars that are out of the mainstream and yet as good or better, than the names everyone knows. This is what can go wrong. Sorry to hear of this.

[Dannyalcatraz]

And the thing is, I've seen photos of his work- closeups- that looked really good.

 

But the key is, it was ALL closeups, so you could only see the best of his craftsmanship, not how the guitars as a whole looked.