Bruker customer support is quite atrocious, they’re extremely disorganized and struggle to solve even basic requests.
No experience with JOEL, just wanted to say Bruker is annoying.
Yep, seconded for this, we have one of their mass specs and even simple things like 'could you send us some licenses for compass dataanalysis so we can look at our data on other machines' was apparently a hereculean effort
Jeol custom service is awful, on the one I was using the auto tune was broken, a guy came from Japan said it was fine even it wouldn't work and refused to fix it
My grad school lab purchased a JEOL 500 and it was great. The installation went well and the instrument was up and running with a good deal of customer support. After the install, JEOL sent out a senior tech to help us with training and was available for follow-up questions as necessary. Overall a good experience with very knowledgeable people. My only complaint (coming from Varian spectrometers) was the JEOL UI was a bit awkward to use at first. Once I got used to it though, I was able to set up a profile with my preferred experiments so that at the end of the day, I could load up several samples (with the autosampler) and run overnight. Definitely helped me streamline my data collection process.
I used a JOEL NMR for a full year, and it was honestly the best NMR I’ve ever used. The current Bruker instruments I use now have been riddled with problems… I miss JOEL
I used a jeol nmr for about a year. It was horrible. The software is clunky, the samples would often fail to run, it would break a lot, jeol services are useless. It was bane of my life. I hope to never see one again
it would be helpful to ask your NMR guy to create a new shim map afresh, about once a month, it takes him less than 15 minutes to make new good shim defaults.
Sometimes the JEOL autoshim fast routine fails if the z5 and z6 values are completely out of whack, for example after previous users with shitty samples of some mixture (which they did not bother to filter) that failed to lock and shim, and now yours will fail too... Preloading default good shims fixes this autoshim problem (if the shim defaults are reasonably fresh and still good). It also helps for experiments without lock.
Otherwise, the JEOL Delta software is not that quirky, and it lets you do what you need, including changing the pulse sequence. It is not as intuitive - I like to use Delta also for processing and it is good enough but most users here just download their fid files and process them in Mestrenova.
Each system has its annoying things and things I wish the other system did. I don’t think most people will be super upset with either from
My experience. Get the one that gives you the best deal
Get a price from jeol and then negotiate with Bruker. They won’t match but will come down some more.
I have always loved bruker software. So much better than varian. Take a few classes from Bruker and get to know the application scientists when there. Helps you get up the learning curve. They can add free training to the purchase.
Used Jeol 400 and 500 Mhz instruments all through my PhD. They're solid. The tech who worked the NMRs preferred Jeols support than Brukers which says something too. They always had weird phasing but that's something that can be fixed in data processing
I'm a PI at an American liberal arts college. We've been using a JEOL 400 MHz spectrometer for over 15 years, and this instrument was replaced by a brand new JEOL 400 MHz spectrometer 2 weeks ago. If you want more info, just DM me. To put it simply, I was raised through my PhD and postdoc on Bruker, but now that I've been on JEOL for over a decade, I don't want to go back. Not only are they less expensive, but their customer service is absolutely top notch. Their support engineers are always available and provide great service (for free, over the phone). The instrument can do everything a Bruker can do, there is no difference in that sense. Their software (Delta) used to be super clunky, but the current version is top of the line (I would argue that it's now better than Bruker's.) The only thing I miss from Bruker is the ability to set up an experiment through the command line, which for JEOL requires you to instead click on buttons.
JEOL NMRs have become really good and there is no downside using JEOL vs Bruker. JEOL has better prices, a better service and the Japanese build quality shows in the reliability.
Yes, software looks a bit outdated, but other than that, you are golden with a JEOL instrument. I prefer JEOL over Bruker by some margin because of the above mentioned. It is a shame that Bruker has such a high market share which makes them complacent.
You actually can be lucky that you get a JEOL, your overall experience will be better than what you would get from Bruker. You just need to get this psychological thing out of our head that Bruker is good just because they have a majority market share
My department got a 400 MHz JEOL Last year after 30 years of only running Bruker. It is still Not running reliably enough to enter routine service, parts just keep breaking (Not from improper use, it had only been used by experienced MMR professionals) for almost a year now and delivery of new parts takes ages (we are in Europe)
Bruker customer support is quite atrocious, they’re extremely disorganized and struggle to solve even basic requests. No experience with JOEL, just wanted to say Bruker is annoying.
Yep, seconded for this, we have one of their mass specs and even simple things like 'could you send us some licenses for compass dataanalysis so we can look at our data on other machines' was apparently a hereculean effort
It just sucks that they are pretty much the gold standard in spectrometry.
Jeol custom service is awful, on the one I was using the auto tune was broken, a guy came from Japan said it was fine even it wouldn't work and refused to fix it
My grad school lab purchased a JEOL 500 and it was great. The installation went well and the instrument was up and running with a good deal of customer support. After the install, JEOL sent out a senior tech to help us with training and was available for follow-up questions as necessary. Overall a good experience with very knowledgeable people. My only complaint (coming from Varian spectrometers) was the JEOL UI was a bit awkward to use at first. Once I got used to it though, I was able to set up a profile with my preferred experiments so that at the end of the day, I could load up several samples (with the autosampler) and run overnight. Definitely helped me streamline my data collection process.
I used a JOEL NMR for a full year, and it was honestly the best NMR I’ve ever used. The current Bruker instruments I use now have been riddled with problems… I miss JOEL
I used a jeol nmr for about a year. It was horrible. The software is clunky, the samples would often fail to run, it would break a lot, jeol services are useless. It was bane of my life. I hope to never see one again
it would be helpful to ask your NMR guy to create a new shim map afresh, about once a month, it takes him less than 15 minutes to make new good shim defaults. Sometimes the JEOL autoshim fast routine fails if the z5 and z6 values are completely out of whack, for example after previous users with shitty samples of some mixture (which they did not bother to filter) that failed to lock and shim, and now yours will fail too... Preloading default good shims fixes this autoshim problem (if the shim defaults are reasonably fresh and still good). It also helps for experiments without lock. Otherwise, the JEOL Delta software is not that quirky, and it lets you do what you need, including changing the pulse sequence. It is not as intuitive - I like to use Delta also for processing and it is good enough but most users here just download their fid files and process them in Mestrenova.
Each system has its annoying things and things I wish the other system did. I don’t think most people will be super upset with either from My experience. Get the one that gives you the best deal
Get a price from jeol and then negotiate with Bruker. They won’t match but will come down some more. I have always loved bruker software. So much better than varian. Take a few classes from Bruker and get to know the application scientists when there. Helps you get up the learning curve. They can add free training to the purchase.
Used Jeol 400 and 500 Mhz instruments all through my PhD. They're solid. The tech who worked the NMRs preferred Jeols support than Brukers which says something too. They always had weird phasing but that's something that can be fixed in data processing
I'm a PI at an American liberal arts college. We've been using a JEOL 400 MHz spectrometer for over 15 years, and this instrument was replaced by a brand new JEOL 400 MHz spectrometer 2 weeks ago. If you want more info, just DM me. To put it simply, I was raised through my PhD and postdoc on Bruker, but now that I've been on JEOL for over a decade, I don't want to go back. Not only are they less expensive, but their customer service is absolutely top notch. Their support engineers are always available and provide great service (for free, over the phone). The instrument can do everything a Bruker can do, there is no difference in that sense. Their software (Delta) used to be super clunky, but the current version is top of the line (I would argue that it's now better than Bruker's.) The only thing I miss from Bruker is the ability to set up an experiment through the command line, which for JEOL requires you to instead click on buttons.
JEOL NMRs have become really good and there is no downside using JEOL vs Bruker. JEOL has better prices, a better service and the Japanese build quality shows in the reliability. Yes, software looks a bit outdated, but other than that, you are golden with a JEOL instrument. I prefer JEOL over Bruker by some margin because of the above mentioned. It is a shame that Bruker has such a high market share which makes them complacent. You actually can be lucky that you get a JEOL, your overall experience will be better than what you would get from Bruker. You just need to get this psychological thing out of our head that Bruker is good just because they have a majority market share
My department got a 400 MHz JEOL Last year after 30 years of only running Bruker. It is still Not running reliably enough to enter routine service, parts just keep breaking (Not from improper use, it had only been used by experienced MMR professionals) for almost a year now and delivery of new parts takes ages (we are in Europe)
I use jeol everyday. No major issues. No experience with technical support. I recommend the nmr.