Marcum LX-5 stopped working

My 3 year old LX-5 seems to have taken a crap on me. It all started a few weeks ago when i was on a trip up to LOTW. On the first day my marcum would show a bottom and would look normal but then everything started flashing and i couldnt keep a steady bottom mark. I thought at the time that maybe i was getting interference from my friends marcum and that was causing it. I tried the following things – switched out battery, my friend had a brand new in the package LX-5 transducer and i put that on and the same thing, turned the gain up, changed cone angles. this last one is the only thing that seemed to help. changing it to the 8 degree angle seemed to diminish the flickering but it didnt get rid of it. well that trip was cut short and i figured maybe it was just a weird incident. last night i went out fishing with it for the first time since that trip and the same thing happened, only this time it was worse. i turned it on and the display was flickering non stop and i could barely get a reading. i switched out batteries and same thing. my friend had his new LX-5 fishing next to me, i took his battery and plugged it into my unit and gave him mine. his worked fine and same result for mine. after about 30 minutes of this the unit just flat out stopped displaying anything at all even though i could hear that it was still running in there. WTH? Im going to call marcum today and im guessing i will have to send it in but honestly for spending 500$ on a unit barely 3 years ago i would not expect to be dealing with this problem so soon. I have been an avid marcum fan but my enthusiasm is waning. any ideas on what could be the problem?

The motor in the head is fryed. I had the samething happen to mine last season. I bright it to marcum and they fixes it free of charge that same day.

You’ll be lucky if they didn’t charge you. Because you hardly used it, yours lasted 3 season. Both my lx3tc crap one after another in the same season. It’s not an uncommon issue and it will continue on and on. Some are fortunate and got more out of it than others. I sold mines after it was serviced. I don’t have time to deal with that sort of stuff especially when you spend $800 and only get 1 season.

Call Marcum and explain what happened, be polite and understand that anything mechanical will eventually wear out. Not this quickly but nothing is perfect.

I’m betting you will only have to pay the shipping cost to them if you ship it.

I don’t take any flasher complaints serious until they have gone through customer service with the company involved… Once they give an explanation or cost associated I will be open to understanding frustrations involved. Until then everything breaks, its about the company that stands behind their product that counts. Let us know what Marcum has to say about your problem!

-My buddies VX1-pro has recently had issues with the bottom bouncing, I am assuming a bad transducer, we will see how Marcum helps him with this and determine the next flasher purchased based on this experience. Customer Service still rules this industry, all makes and models have issues.

i took my marcum in for servicing today. i have to say for all of the great things ive heard about marcums CS i wasnt overly impressed. for one i called them right when they opened at 8am. no one answered so i did as the message prompt instructed and left a message with my name and phone number and said i would like a call back. i didnt receive one so i called back at noon and spoke with a person. not a big deal maybe they were really busy but i would have liked to receive a call. I drove it to the location in new hope during my lunch break cause i work pretty close to that location. the person received me at the door. I explained to him what was going on and told him the things i tried. it didnt take him long to agree that it wasnt working right. the one thing that stuck me from the whole experience was that the gentleman said to me, “we are pretty bad at calling people and telling them when their unit has been serviced and is ready to be picked up so i would say if you want to know when its done please call us”. Now i work in a tech call center and my job is customer service. I could only think to myself that if i told that to some of the customers i deal with on a daily basis it wouldnt be long before i was called into the managers office for a sit down. Anyway, we will see what they say. he did say it should take more than a few days for it to be fixed. Im still hoping that its taken care of for free since, as i said, its only on its 3rd season and this season is still young. My guess is that they only do two kinds of service there; identify the user error or replace the whole unit with a new one. Ill let you guys know how my experience goes once its finished.

I had the same thing happen to me the third time out,,called Marcum sent it back they replaced the motor free of charge,, good luck id still buy another one if I ever lost this one in a heart beat good fishing kelley

Mine did the same thing and I had motor fixed. I went on a trip the next day and it was bouncing after an hour. I ended up getting my lx7 then. I really think they have a bad batch of motors or something cause this is happening to everyone. I loved the lx5 too… I have heard nothing bad about the first ones that came out the 2000 watt units.

Yep.. they are bad about call backs no doubt. Been there twice, it’s not like they were super busy.. it’s just the way they function. Hopefully I’ll never have to go back as I still own the lx7. Been happy with the lx7.

My 7 year old LX-5 was just acting strange, I brought it to the service center, paid the 9 bucks to have it shipped backed to me, also paid the $80 because it was that old and received a new unit in 5 days. I really like the unit and feel for $80, I got a good deal. I feel they stand behind their stuff. I also really like the Marcums and would buy another if I had to.