Warranty

Coverage periods

Every FREQ product carries a limited warranty from the day it arrives. We cover defects in materials and workmanship — the things we got wrong, not the things life did to your gear. Parts and labour are both included; you never pay for the fix on a covered fault.

Batteries get a shorter window because chemistry ages no matter how well it's built. Normal capacity fade over time is expected and not a defect; a cell that fails to hold a reasonable charge inside the coverage period is.

• Transducers & electronics — 3 years. Drivers, amplifiers, DACs, DSP boards, wired connections, switches and controls.
• Batteries — 2 years. Rechargeable cells in earbuds, headphones and portable DACs, covered against premature failure.
• Limited editions — lifetime driver-rematch guarantee (see below), in addition to the standard 3-year electronics coverage.

What's covered — and what isn't

Covered: manufacturing defects, dead or distorting drivers, failed amplification or DAC stages, charging faults, unresponsive controls, and structural failures in headbands, hinges and housings under normal use. If it broke because we built it that way, it's on us.

Not covered: accidental damage, drops, crushing, liquid ingress beyond a product's rated resistance, cosmetic wear, and damage from unauthorised repair or modification. Consumable parts — ear pads, ear tips, cables and headbands — wear out with use and fall outside warranty, though we stock them for the life of the model plus a decade (see Parts, below).

The lifetime driver-rematch guarantee

Our limited editions — the Obelisk desktop speaker among them — are built around hand-matched driver pairs, measured and selected so the left and right channels track within a hair of each other. That match is the whole point of a reference piece.

If a driver in a limited-edition unit ever fails or drifts out of tolerance — for the life of the product, with no end date — we'll rematch it. We measure your surviving driver, pull a partner from our reserve stock to match it, and restore the pair to spec. Coverage stays with the serial number, not the original buyer, so a unit bought secondhand carries the same promise.

How to make a claim

Start a claim from your order confirmation, or reach support with your order number and the product's serial number. Tell us what's happening and, where it helps, send a short clip or photo — a recording of the distortion, a shot of the damage. Most diagnoses take one round of messages, not ten.

Once we confirm the fault is covered, we issue a prepaid, insured shipping label. Return shipping on a valid warranty claim is always free. We'll keep you posted at each step, the same way we do for an order.

Repair, replacement and turnaround

We repair first. Most covered faults — a driver swap, a board replacement, a new battery cell — are fixed at the bench and returned to you as the same unit, broken in and yours. Repairs run roughly 7 to 14 business days plus transit, and we tell you the estimate before work begins.

When a repair isn't viable, we replace. You'll receive an equivalent unit; if your exact model is no longer made, we substitute the closest current product of equal or greater value. Limited editions are always repaired and rematched rather than swapped, so the piece you own stays the piece you own.

Out-of-warranty service and parts

When coverage lapses, the relationship doesn't. We service FREQ gear for the life of the model and a full decade after it's discontinued, at fair flat-rate pricing — we quote the cost up front, and you decide before we touch it.

We keep replacement pads, ear tips, cables and headbands in stock across that same window, so a worn part never ends a good pair of headphones. Need a fresh set of pads or a new cable? Order them direct, no claim required — and any free-shipping code (LISTEN, SIGNAL, FIRSTPLAY) applies to parts orders too.