Hopefully, that won't happen!

All of our products are built to order.  We don't build them in advance to some "standard" configuration.  We build our products to your specifications, which may well be different from what other customers might want.  That is a labor-intensive process, much more so than you might expect.  It also requires pricey custom-manufactured parts, and often requires expensive or difficult-to-find components.  All of this requires GT to make a substantial investment in time and money when we take an order.  At present, we simply cannot stay in business if we offer an unconditional satisfaction guarantee.  So there are no refunds or returns offered.  This is very common for any custom-manufactured, made-to-order product.

Before you order custom products, you should be familiar with similar products that are available.  In this case, that would be guitar pedals that you can try to decide if you like them, or decide what you don't like about them and would like to change or customize.  That information is critical to choosing and customizing our products.  If possible, play any pedals that our modules compare to before you order one of our modules.  Chances are that you've already done that.

In almost every case, if we say one of our modules "compares to" a particular guitar pedal, it means we have played our module and that pedal side-by-side and compared them.  Usually the only exceptions are for extremely rare or expensive vintage pedals that we don't have (yet) to compare with our module.  Have you played an original Shatterbox recently?  We haven't.  In most cases, we are able to get somewhere from "very close" to "spot on" when we compare the two.  If they don't sound "very close" to "spot on", we discuss that in the module description.  Many of the customizations we offer are specifically meant to change the sound.  Those are also discussed in the module descriptions to give some general indication of how they change the tone.  That's where your experience with a pedal can be useful, because we'll describe that option as "it sounds like Pedal X, but with a flatter mids response" or something similar.  If you are familiar with Pedal X, you can imagine how that customization would sound and whether you might be happy with it.

Also, we all know that we've bought pedals that we thought we would like, but we didn't end up liking them well enough to use them.  That's not specific to GT effects.  It happens all the time, and for a variety of reasons.  In the end, you can't really tell about a pedal or effect until you drop it into your setup and play it yourself.  If you aren't happy with it, it isn't likely that it is because it was poorly built - possible, but not likely.  The pedal is probably working just like it was designed to work.  It's the design that is the problem.  The design doesn't match your needs.  But it's hard to evaluate a design, so we're back to the need to be familiar with it and playing it.  That's just part of the process of building your tone and a risk whether you are buying an effect, a guitar, an amp, or some other piece of gear.

Customizations are always a bit tricky.  It isn't possible for us to build every possible combination of customizations, or even all the "simple" customizations.  In some cases, it is difficult to say exactly how some customization will sound.  We usually have a general idea that we describe for that customization, but words and sounds are difficult to match up when you're describing a range of variations.  However, we will be testing the sound as we build the module.  If there is some reason that we believe the sound is "off" or isn't headed in the direction you specified when we configured the order, we will stop and check with you.

The good news is that there is a robust market for used gear.  If you end up with something you don't like, it is usually not difficult to sell it online and try something else.  You may not get your full purchase price back, but you usually aren't stuck with it or out big money.  In the future, we plan to add a section to our website for GT product users to buy/sell used GT gear to each other, just to make it a bit easier to swap GT gear.  We also plan to add discussion forums so users can share experiences about our products and how they sound.

We carefully test everything before we ship it, so defects should be rare.  Of course, if you think one of our products is defective, you can contact Customer Support to resolve any issues. 

That may all sound a little scary, but we want to be very up-front about everything.  We may still be able to help out if something doesn't turn out the way you like.  Check out our Adjustments policy for information about what we might be able to do to help out.

Finally, just from a practical point of view...  Yes, we would like to earn your business and sell you some of our modules.  But even more than that, we would like to earn the opportunity to sell you some more modules.  We'll do what we can with every order to get you what you want so we can earn your return business and your recommendation to others.