Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaredandrews | Hacker News Reader

I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... About 15 yeard ago, I knew a guy who exclusively bought Monster... well he had two of them, one from the guitar to the pedal board and another from the board to the amp.

But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty. Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.

From what I can tell they got rid of the lifetime warranty around 2018 and have mostly transitioned to licensing their name.

View on HN

We used them at a student union for a similar reason - lots of students thinking they're a rock star swinging mics around and stuff meant we ended up with a lot of damage. Though IMHO the monster cables didn't actually take the damage any better than real "professional-tier" brands, that "no questions" replacement policy was used heavily by us.

> Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.

Every time I've had a cable fail it was at one of the solder joints on the connector. Stripping it down and re-soldering takes a few minutes, sure, but it saves you from having to drive to a music shop or pay for shipping. For this reason I try to only buy cables that are built to let you do this instead of ones with closed, molded ends.

Back before monoprice was bought by a Chinese company, I had one of their HDMI cables, and yeah - the connector just slipped right off. Buncha thin gold wires sticking out.

I contacted them. They asked for a photo, which I was able to text them directly from my phone (very advanced for 2009). He looked at it, said it was their fault, and to toss it. Another was shipped to me.

I have a Logitech mouse that’s double clicking. One of the 10 (!!!) steps I was supposed to do before they’d accept that it’s broken was to go to a website and click 100 (!!!!!) times.

I sincerely miss the companies that were totally dedicated to customer service.

> go to a website and click 100 (!!!!!) times.

Captchas are craaaaazy nowadays

I have this problem with my Logitech mice too. They work great for two or three years, and then they start registering about one in every 50 clicks or so as double clicks, with the frequency slowly increasing to maybe 1 in 10.

That and the infinite-scroll wheel bearing fails. I’ve probably gone through 5-10 g502 mice in the past decade. I usually buy them 2-3 at a time when they are on sale.

Sounds like it's working out for them

Yes, unfortunately there are no other mice that have the infinite scroll wheel and I’ve come to love it for office work.

They’re generally pretty good about warrantying them, but life is short so I don't always bother.

That stupid scroll wheel is so great I hate it. I also can’t give it up. Sometimes I want smooth, sometimes I don’t.

That might just be dust gathering or humidity/temperature weathering. I've fixed most degraded mice by cleaning them, and there's different sprays/lubes you can get that will not only help the hardware but the electrical responsiveness and accuracy.

Sounds like all electronics shops got bought by a Chinese company (Newegg is another example). Are there any left? BestBuy maybe?

Jameco?

I’m fortunate enough to live near a Microcenter. Highly recommend them. They do have an online store as well.

"Ok, I clicked 100 times, but I just did it with the mouse pointer on my desktop."

"Did I stutter?"

As an IT professional; It's not even worth my time to substantiate those claims. The user gets a new mouse and I record it as a ticket. I've never had to "cut anyone off" from issuing new equipment, but if there's ever a problematic user I'll have a record of their equipment issues on file.

I hove some Monster cables around, and I bought them knowing that their claims are bogus, but the things are built like a tank.

None of them have broken or developed faulty connections over the years, and that's worth it the price difference in my opinion. In my case, for a couple of them, the price difference was nil, because the store was selling them at a 50% discount to just get them out of their premises.

Switchcraft + Belden or Canare and you’ll have cables to pass to your grandchildren.

I definitely got upsold on a Monster cable when I bought my first guitar on the back of that lifetime warranty. Joke's on me, I guess; the cable is almost 20 years old and still working, never had to use the warranty even once. I need to take worse care of my things.

Guitar cable?, ya...noooo cordless my droogys prolly cheaper too did a custom stealth mod to one guitar where the transmitter, plugs into 1/4 jack,under the back cover nice thing is that its possible to turn an amp up to face peeling loudness, and step back, and not get hurt, got to watch for things vibrating off of shelves though and are you kidding me?, I know that as a guitarer there are cumulative cognitive effects, but when a fucking speaker cable outfit starts suing people, something has definitly gone off the rails but oh ya, there are people in jail for "cheating" on video games, but somehow there are government weed stores tone is in the hands

I prefer a cable in my active bass, because it's one less set of batteries to think about, and that guy has a pretty hot output. Analog distortion is way better than the sounds you get when you saturate a digital signal path, heh.

Some dressing to go with that salad, man?

shredding some words, but maybe I should join the chorus and try a little echo ;) mang

My bass cable is a Monster Cable and is ~45 years old. Bought it when I was 15.

I've had a 20' monster cable for at least 15 years now that is showing no signs of slowing down, even after a period of regular practice/shows. If only I was actually able to cash in on the warranty! Other cables from reputable brands haven't lasted this long in less demanding conditions.

A few of my friends did the same. They could easily run to Guitar Center and swap broken cables before a gig. That could easily be worth the added cost.

It’s why Snap-On sells so many tools. They will send someone to you with the new tool if one breaks.

This is why pro gear doesnt come with a replacement warranty. The seconds/minutes spent finding and swapping a cable during a live show far exceeds any concept of replacement costs. Multiply any failure rate by the hundreds or even thousands of cables at a modern concert and any failure rate is unacceptable. If you care, buy good parts and build the cables yourself by hand. That is the only way to be sure it was done right.

> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables...

Basically, someone asked themselves "how do I port the audiophile scam to the home entertainment space?" And monster cables was born.

When Monster first came out it became a meme.

Their advertisement was laughable and remember joking with tech savvy friends about how all wire was vastly inferior to the alien technology monster used in their oxygen free high purity copper that "allows more music to flow" (actual quote from their shitty packaging.) They sold cables for everything AV and then invaded the musician space with their trash.

Overly aggressive salesmen in electronics stores would push them on every sale. It was tiring. Buying a little TV for the kitchen? "Dont forget the monster HDMI cable and monster coax cable to hook up the cable box! oh and the monster surge strip that purifies the electron essence before the harmonic protuberances make it into your music!" Sure thing chief, lemme spend a hundred bucks on five bucks worth of cable. No wonder they turned into a meme and a lot of people hated them. But there's always a sucker who loves showing off his $80 cables to another sucker.

If you travel back im time you’ll find audio connectors corroded. It was standard practice to use an eraser to polish the jacks. Monster offered gold plated connectors. It really made difference. Any benefits beyond non corrosive is questionable.

And now they sell gold-plated optical connectors.

And it so totally rugged against tarnished contacts, unlike copper or brass contact.

Would recommend.

Back in the day, Radio Shack offered gold plated connectors on their cables, too (IIRC, there was "Archer" and "Archer Gold"). To this day I always get a little prickly at people who sneer at audiophile cables and specifically rag on gold-plated connectors rather than, I don't know, oxygen-free silver cables or whatever. The gold plating was actually a real valuable thing, and the cables could still actually be pretty cheap (e.g., Radio Shack!).

I actually did have Monster-brand speaker cable many years ago, but it was the original version with no connectors, just a bare spool. I don't remember it being much more expensive than any other 12-gauge speaker wire at the time, and it was both more flexible than some other brands and prettier when exposed -- which is arguably a selling point. I still have a segment of that original cable, actually, and use it for my center channel. Somewhat amusingly given the actual linked article, the rest of the cable I have is from Blue Jeans.

I still have a radio shack 3.5mm cable with gold connectors that my dad and I bought when I was 5. Still works great. One of my favorite cables. Has a lovely soft touch rubber insulation, which has survived all these years

My town has a radio shack still, and I visit them as much as I can, but I have yet to find a cable that nice

Yeah, 1979 was totally the biggest year in meme history.

The sad part is that, once upon a time, those crazy claims mattered. There were once good and bad cables. But over the last centry all the best practices were universally adopted (twisted pairs, shielding, consistent conductors made of soft copper). Monster now sounds like a car company shouting about seatbelts and crumple zones, things we now just expect but were once important to look for when selecting cable.

Given Monster some credit for at least being a brand. Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search. It will be out of business before your delivery arrives.

> Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search.

I remember seeing someone else raging about how a Chinese company on Amazon had no accountability because the business address field was filled with unintelligible gibberish and there was no way to find the company.

So I looked it up. Not only was it very easy to find the address, it was obviously the address of the owner's personal home. So even if the company did go out of business, odds are good you could make contact and ask for redress.

People will assume anything.

>Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search

Well it's not fun because most of them have very painless warranty claims - hammer the product with a 1 star review and applie for replacement, most will just give you full refund, no / barely any questions asked. Anything to keep their top Amazon search positions and reviews. I remember when Amazon was slammed with MPOW bluetooth products, I had minor hinge issue after almost a year on a set of cans and they just shipped me a new one, didn't even need photo evidence of destruction of old device. That's been my experience with multipe "Chinesium" products on Amazon, and essentially why Amazon > Aliexpress for the RMA premium. Buy from a top ranked product where seller doesn't want to compromise position with bad reviews, pay a few bucks extra on Amazon, get faster shipping and no question asked exchanges/refunds because seller already have it built into margins.

What if we bring the idea into 2025 and sell subscription-based cables?

Yeah, back when I first started playing bass (which would have been around 2008, interestingly enough) I used their cables for a bit because of the unlimited replacements. As a young teen without any income, it honestly was a pretty decent deal; in retrospect, the cables certainly weren't high quality and probably developed issues far more easily than a higher quality cable, but I could also go into any guitar store that sold those cables and then trade them in for fresh ones, no questions asked. It wasn't like I really had that many gigs, so being guaranteed not to ever have to buy new cables was easily worth it even if it meant that I would have to go back to the store any time they failed. Eventually I got old enough that I had more disposable income and would play a bit more often to the point where it would be more inconvenient to have to get a replacement on short notice, so I moved on to buying higher quality ones, but I don't really see the experience I got as a scam. Maybe the were marketed to the point where people who really weren't getting the benefits from their model were still buying them when they would be better served by a different company's cables, but I feel like the model they were trying to do did at least make sense for me at the time, and I think that it's worth making a distinction between "trying to exploit naive customers by selling something no one needs" and "trying to market beyond the actual customer base that is served well by the business model", mostly because I feel like the latter is a spectrum that quite a lot of companies fall on to some degree, and it's not as clear to me where exactly the line should be drawn for how "acceptable" this is. (I'd be fine with literally any instance of this being called out and shamed, but realistically I think this is looked past by most people so much of the time that it's not accurate to claim anyone is actually doing it)

if anyone wants to block the annoying troll spammer that invaded hackernews today, please put this rule on your personal filters on ublock origin:

##.comtr.athing:has-text('bschmidt')

Seems someone thinks they're being super clever when really they're just childish and annoying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

most hacker thing I've seen here in years

The website is almost 20 years old and they are no many to throw a tantrum like this.

And it can all be cleaned with a DELETE WHERE LIKE sql statement.

They proved a serious vulnerability to the entire site without causing irreputable damage.

Phreak on.

(and not very important but to be pedantic, I don't know if hn has an sql backend? It used to be all in-memory if I recall, but that was many years ago)

> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables..

Overpriced because you are envious of their marketing or pricing strategy? They were appropriately priced as long as the marketing wasn't more deceptive than products are generally (and noting it's not a food product or medical claim).

> But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty.

Isn't that (along with branding) a valid reason to price a product at a certain level?

Anyone can make a top quality cable in 10 minutes: buy 2 Neutrik connectors, buy as many Cordial cable as you need, four solderings and you have a top guitar cable for life, for maybe 1/4 of the price of a similar Monster.

Don't like to solder? Cordial has also cables with Neutrik connectors ready to use, for half the price of a Monster.

The lifetime warranty clearly was valuable to many people here.

The problem though, is the _misleading_ marketing around "better sound" and similar that is false and does not justify charging more to basic home consumers who don't know any better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com