FM3 Repair

Two days ago, or the same day the FM3 Turbo MKII was announced, my FM3 USB stopped working. I’m in Australia and sent the unit in for a third party repairer as instructed by Fractal’s dealer here. I’m yet to get a quote for the repair but reading these $500 bills got me pretty worried. I will provide and update as soon as I hear back from them.
 
SiggyCertified said:
I'm literally dealing with this issue now, I will have to send in my unit, and it's the second time it's happened to me, but on a different unit. If this is as common as it seems, the price to have is fixed is fairly fucking ridiculous and I think if it's as common an issue as it is, there should be some form of leniency. I'm extremely disappointed in hearing that you had to pay $500 for a replacement USB socket, that's so inexcusable.
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Don't confuse a broken usb connector with a bad USB controller chip. Those two repairs will differ greatly in difficulty and cost.
 
Eric Rowland said:
I have had to have my 2 1/2 yr old unit repaired due to the USB chip failing.
The service dept said they do not do chip replacement in house so they had to replace the PCB.
Has anyone had this experience?
Any thoughts on this matter?
Thank you.
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Same here!!! My FM3 was freezing on me, not USB related though. I sent it in, they said they fixed it and sent it back. It froze within 20 minutes of playing it. Sent it to them again and they just told me the main chip is bad so the main board needs replaced. Like you, my unit is not even 3yrs old yet. I think it is crap that the repair is not covered. Very disappointing.
 
I am jumping from the "lowly" AX8 forum having been reading this thread. My USB connector "broke" recently and I was gutted. I had always used ax-edit for everything and even though I have owned my unit for a while I was still learning new tricks and things to play around with (in ax-edit) and finding some new to me interesting sounds. So when the USB packed in I was lost!
A friend who runs a PC shop (repairs) offered to desolder and stick a new USB connector in, but this has not worked. It could just be a dry solder but could also be something more expensive. But reading things on here it does sound to me that the USB connector must be the weak link in Fractal gear.
On the bright side, I can adjust almost everything from the front panel of my unit. Which I am kind of enjoying. The only downside is that I can't import or export anything to my PC or to axe-change or to anywhere else!
Has it put me off Fractal? No. Would I buy another Fractal device? Yes. But my next one will be rack mounted and never moved once it is in position. And then my fingers will be crossed that nothing breaks!
 
It would be nice to know that if this problem happens again (for me) I could buy a replacement unit which is not susceptible to the same issue. If a design improvement could be made why not make one now?

Sean Meredith-Jones
 
For those that want to physically protect their usb connections - for my mixing consoles, which have usb ports for firmware updates and backups etc, I always purchase a little extender cable, so that I plug any usb cables into the extender instead of the console. My thought pattern is that plugging into the extension cable will wear on the cable, and not the usb port on the console. I’ve been doing that for ten years or so, with zero failures… that doesn’t mean I have the answer, but is could not hurt to never be touching the devices usb port.

Thanks
Pauly
 
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A while back I had to send an FM3 in for service because the USB just stopped connecting to the computer. The jack itself seemed fine and had no trauma that I know of.

Being in the US, I sent it directly to Fractal on January 30th. I got a message on February 6th that it had been received. A few hours later I got a message that the main board needed to be replaced. The cost quoted was $470 plus $40 for the bench fee. Additionally, return shipping to me was $41. It was fixed on the 7th, shipped on the 8th, and delivered back to me on the 16th. All in all that's a great turnaround time--basically two days at Fractal (kinda just one day).

Yeah it sucked to pay $551 to get it fixed but it had to be done. If I'd gotten the extended warranty I'd have been much better off. When we click to buy these things and we actively choose to not get the extended warranty we know full well that we are gambling that anything that goes wrong will do so in the first year. That gamble almost always pays off. Almost. So the day they shipped my FM3 back to me, I purchased the extended warranty on my FM9. :)

These things are definitely solidly built overall. They get toured around the world and have very few issues I think. This FM3 USB issues do seem to be some of the more common ones that reoccur. I don't think these issues are "normal" but I think something there is probably a weak link.

The only troublesome thing to me is that I still have no idea what caused the USB system to fail so I have no idea if I could be doing something else to make the problem less likely to reoccur.

In the future, perhaps when the next generation of products comes out, I'd like to see the the units have a 3 year warranty as a default and have that cost rolled into the purchase price. Maybe that's too much to ask though so I'll just buy the extended warranty again at that time if that's still the model.
 
In case anyone is interested, my unit needed the main board swap, so it was the more expensive repair cost

I was happy to receive it back two weeks to the day I sent it

Then the FM3 Turbo was announced and I wondered, what if
 
pauly said:
For those that want to physically protect their usb connections - for my mixing consoles, which have usb ports for firmware updates and backups etc, I always purchase a little extender cable, so that I plug any usb cables into the extender instead of the console. My thought pattern is that plugging into the extension cable will wear on the cable, and not the usb port on the console.
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I use an extender with a downward angle USB-B to reduce how far the connector extends from the back-panel. The one I use only sticks out 5/8" so there's not much force to break the connector in the modeler if something bumps it.

I use a Temple Audio Duo 24 board for my modelers, and these items to route the USB to the right-hand side of the board, which works nicely:
Reverse the Switchcraft connector so the Type-A is on the inside and the Type-B is facing outwards. It can also be rotated if desired.

Add a Temple Audio Punched Plate Mod to secure it on the end. There are probably other brands available but I had a mod already.

Temple Audio has a female USB A/B adapter that fits their punched plates, but I couldn't find one when I was looking so I went with the Switchcraft equivalent above.
 
fsilveira said:
Two days ago, or the same day the FM3 Turbo MKII was announced, my FM3 USB stopped working. I’m in Australia and sent the unit in for a third party repairer as instructed by Fractal’s dealer here. I’m yet to get a quote for the repair but reading these $500 bills got me pretty worried. I will provide and update as soon as I hear back from them.
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I'm in Australia too. Did you manage to get your unit fixed and where did you send it and was the cost reasonable
 
Philip Robinson said:
I'm in Australia too. Did you manage to get your unit fixed and where did you send it and was the cost reasonable
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Hi mate, I sent an email and gave a call to Independent Music and they instructed me to send it to their third party repair shop. I reported it as a known issue and Andrew kindly contacted Fractal to see if that could be done free of charge despite not being under warranty. Turns out that Fractal sent a new part and fixed it for free so, huge shout out to Andres from independent music for this!
 
Tonedeaf said:
I got A Roland Um-One Mk2 instead of sending my FM3 for a USB repair. Not as good as having a working USB, but I don't play hooked up to my computer.
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Which cons did you find out or does it work like normal USB connection? Is FM3 Edit in parallel to DAW recording or reamping possible?
 
fsilveira said:
Hi mate, I sent an email and gave a call to Independent Music and they instructed me to send it to their third party repair shop. I reported it as a known issue and Andrew kindly contacted Fractal to see if that could be done free of charge despite not being under warranty. Turns out that Fractal sent a new part and fixed it for free so, huge shout out to Andres from independent music for this!
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Thanks, I will chase Andrew again. That was good of factual. Appreciate the reply
 
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