Diamante splitting/stacking

[Kerry F]

Does anyone else have this issue?  I have my Diamante set on minus 1 less stacking because on balanced I get too much stacking.  So minus 1 less stacking is the best setting for me and I get some stacking and splitting with that.  I'm working on a job that was pretty slow, wrote pretty clean.  Last time I sent my D in for service they changed the motherboard and it was great for quite a while.  I'm getting this major splitting now of a two stroke word coming out in four split strokes.  I haven't dropped or banged my writer.  Does anyone else experience this, where it's great when you get it back from service and then deteriorates again over time?

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

Yes.  My Diamante splits my strokes pretty bad.  I had three RT hookups today and I was writing perfectly today (not always the case) and my Diamante was spliting a 2-stroke word into three strokes.  Very, very frustrating.  It happens a lot, actually. I've even had it taken in to have it looked at but Stenograph didn't do anything about it. 

My other Diamante will stack terrible.  I am trying to pick the lesser of two evils at this point.  I'm sticking with the splitting.

[Kerry F]

Kelli, have you ever noticed when you send it in that the loaner you get works better than your writer or has different issues?  It's interesting that I had almost no stacking and splitting when I first got it back and then it deteriorates.   And if you have two Ds and one stacks worse than the other, with the same settings??? thenit seems to me it's a quality control issue they need to address.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

Every Diamante or Mira is different. I liked one of my "loaner" Miras so much better about five years ago, I kept the loaner and sent back in my writer.  I took off the number  (sort of like a VIN number for a car)  on the loaner so they wouldn't know.  They knew because they saw what I wrote on here and knew I did it. 

They said it was fine because they didn't want the negative publicity that can come with the world seeing what the customer service/tech support is doing with writers.  Basically I felt they didn't do anything with my writer, maybe waited a week and then sent it back to me.  The loaner was way better and I was much happier with it.

[Kerry F]

What does this mean:

world seeing what the customer service/tech support is doing with writers. 

I just would like them to figure out a way to have all the writers write as good as this loaner to kept.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

It means they don't want negative publicity when people complain online about their customer service.

[Janiece Young]

I don't have a huge problem with this but I know sometimes when I write "yes," I get a split stroke.  I went ahead and defined that as "yes" in my dictionary.  I know you can't do that for every word, but I have a few common words I have defined because I sometimes split the stroke.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

Boy, I wish that was all the splitting I got.  It splits my strokes all the time.  I even put in "less splitting" times 3 and can't adjust it any more but it still does it.

[Kerry F]

Janiece, you know that split "yes" I get too and have defined over and over again and I still get it untranslated in Catalyst..........

[Janiece Young]

I'm still writing on a Mira.  

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

My Mira never split the strokes.  I mostly had stacking issues.

[Kerry F]

Wow, Kelli, you put in less splitting times 3 and still get splitting?  If I did that, times 3, I'd get a ton more stacking........Stenograph definitely needs to address this.  Somehow the Passport writer (the short time I had it) never split or stacked.  They figured that out somehow.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

My Passport stacked the worst out of all of them.  However, I sold my Passport to a friend because I hated it and it turned out to be a lemon and Advantage sent him a new Passport.  He actually loves his Passport now and the stroke is amazing.  I think they just needed a few years to get all the bugs worked out of the machine.  

I do, however, really like the stroke of the Diamante; so smooth. My only issue is all this splitting; makes it hard to read what you've written, especially when reading back.  Can be a real challenge.