Driving them nuts

[Enzo]

I used to have a business partner, it made for more opportunity to share silly ideas. We came into possession of a large supply of resistors and caps. They were surplus items, and most were high precision but odd values. Like 221k and 1612 ohm resistors, stuff like that. Meanwhile, I used to work with a guy, and my partner knew him well too, and teh guy was super anal about parts. He was convinced that everything was super specific and he would go so far as to order the exact same 4558 ICs from Peavey and Fender and Korg and whoever, and stock them indeividually in brand drawers.

SO partner and I designed an amp, and we figured to use the parts we had. SO that 221k resistor in the plate with a 1612 ohm cathode resistor for a preamp stage. And so on. Then we figured we'd have someone take it to the other guy for service, and we imagined him going nuts trying to figure out what those values were for. After all, if an amp had 1% 1612 ohm resistors, they must have been selected for something, right? ...MUST HAVE. It would never have occurred to the guy that the selection was cheap surplus part availability.


Alas, we never actually did the deed, but it was fun scheming.

[olddawg]

Being a bench tech has always had it's interesting and quirky characters IMHO. In the shop I work the most I would always ask the new guy, "So... What's wrong with you?" I would do this because if you had the intelligence, experience, and education to really do the job, you could probably do something else for more money and better benefits. So we always had a collection of quirky characters; reclussives, alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals in hiding, a wide rage of personality disorders, etc. I remember one guy that would absolutely go mental if anyone touched anything on his bench... and he could tell if anything was moved a milimeter. So another crazy cuss epoxied all of his hand tools to the bench. Not as entertainly cerebral as your story Enzo, but a lot of freaks work in shops..or at least did in my day.

[Enzo]

Hey, you bet. Not to mention the cast of characters in the music game. I used to work in the coin-op trade, training my techs in field service. I worked with a shop full of guys long enough, I could recognize their work. OH Dave would have done this or this is definitely Kurt's work. It would blow their minds when I'd go ask them something about a repair and they'd counter "How do you know I was the one that worked on it?" I recognize your work. But really, it is like hearing a guitar line and identifying it as Santana, Jimmy Page, or Jimi Hendrix. Not hard once you know how they play.

I didn't spread it myself, but a common gag in the arcade trade is to super glue a quarter ( or token) to the floor. Then watch as people go nuts trying to pick it up.

I once thought it would be funny....
Ever stay at a motel, and in the bathroom they have slipped a paper strip across the toilet seat, proclaiming it to have been sanitized for your protection? I went to the local cleaning supply place and got a box of those strips. You had to buy them by the box, and there is something like 1000 in a box. I figured I'd slip one around a repaired item when returning it to the customers.

And you know, it WAS funny, at least the first few times. Now I am not sure what to do with the other 994 strips, but the first half dozen were a riot.

[olddawg]

Lol ...I used to tell the crew the most important part of the repair was cleaning the unit. They would all grumble about it, and avoid it if they could. But having that unit clean could make all the difference in the world to a customer. It had to look better than it did when it came into the shop. And everything was bagged. I still have cockroach nightmares. Things you couldn't believe were actually in peoples homes or studios.

[Dr Kaos]

The first thing I was taught was "If you can't fix it , clean it." LOL.
Most people aren't cheerful about having to part with their hard earned dollars to have their pride and joy repaired but if it looks better than when it went in it eases the pain somewhat.
If it looks worse they are more likely to find something else to niggle about.

[km6xz]

Yes, that is an important element in the customer's evaluation of a service. They might not understand the details of the work done but if it looks good that certainly can see that it was cared for. Even if nothing was done, and the unit had not even been put on the bench, receiving it back in the same state of cleanliness or lack of it causes many people to forget how dirty it was when it came in and see the dirt when picking it up as something added by the shop. A lot of people are slobs but expect any services to be much more concerned than they are themselves. You can always tell the slobs, they are the ones to complain first if there is a speck of lint on a bathroom counter in a hotel.
I liked the look of my clothes when picking them up from the laundry so asked the owner where he got the printed thin film bagging that everything was put in after cleaning. It turned out to be dirt cheap to have custom printing on the continuous roll garment bags so I ordered a slightly thicker version and had every unit cleaned and bagged after it was finished. That little 10 second process and $0.08 cost generated more positive comments than low prices, high level technical capability or any other feature of the shop except the home made chocolate chip cookies we baked every day for customers, or the attractive girls working the lobby counter. Guys just do not complain when discussing their problem with a girl that normally is way out of his league:>) Guys are so predictable.... I know I am....

[52 Bill]

My brother in law used to work in the pinball/video game industry. He told me that some of the techs would get each other by sneaking up behind someone working an a crt and clapping their hands to simulate that high pitched sound of a high voltage arc. Real funny.

He said that they would only do it if the tech's hands weren't inside the box, but still.

[Jazz P Bass]

I only had had one person 'bitch' about cleaning his amp.
It was a '61 sometnibg Gibson amp.
The tolex was all peeling off, the speaker had a 1/4" of crud at the bottom surround.
Said I ruined the vibe of it.

[olddawg]

A lot of shops use cleaning and stuff to pump up the bill. Back in the 80s CA started requiring an AC Safety Check for ground leakage. You could make a jig for $3 or less and use your meter. My boss bought a bunch of Sencor variacs with the test probe and leakage meter built in to it. So on every repair we would put a Sencor sticker that had the leakage measured in microamps, the max allowed by law, the date, and the tech signature. He charged $2.75 for that and a cleaners/lubricants fee of $2.25. When you did hundreds even thousands of repairs a month it really added up. An extra $5 for each repair!

[jrfrond]

There's a lot to be said for raising the perceived value of an item or service. You know Doug, it is my contention that a lot of the gear we work on was designed with surplus parts anyway. How many times have you searched a semiconductor, only to come up with a seemingly endless list of surplus dealers because it was out-of-production.

Ironically, we just had this happen the other day with a dbx EQ..... it needed a 37.5K resistor, which we did not have, so we took some 38K 5% resistors and found one real close. I wasn't ordering 37.5K resistors that will never get used, and we stock a lot of oddball values.

[Enzo]

Or designed by formulas. I have a couple old Yorkville powered mixers or power amps that are chock full of things like 11 ohm resistors and 232 ohms or whatever. Not the sort of thing people would go out and find, I have to think it was the result of someones calculator coming up with the value.


A long time ago I stopped taking in old Moog synths, because the parts were all precision and/or matched stuff.

[Mars Amp Repair]

as for cleaning,
I'll never forget working on some Fisher receiver back in the 70's that had been tanned by years of cigarette smoke. I realized that it still had the protective plastic coating on all of the chrome pieces...I was like 23yrs old. So I peeled it all off & really thought these folks would flip if their unit came back all silvery & shiny like new.

NOT!!...they guy accused us of swapping his 'Special Gold Series' panels for some cheaper silver ones. He was going to sue us! Of course he never did, but ya just never know what people are going to think.

glen

[Enzo]

Oh the little plastic film on any plastic lens on products. I think more people leave them on than do remove them. Much as I want to, I never remove them for exactly that reason.

[Mars Amp Repair]

Yeah, that was 1977 or so...I have never removed that stuff ever since that time...I think I once actually called the customer & asked him if it would be ok to peel that stuff off...I'm sure he didn't understand what was such a big deal I felt I had to call him ;-] ...ya never know. g

[Steve Conner]

Oh the little plastic film on any plastic lens on products. I think more people leave them on than do remove them. Much as I want to, I never remove them for exactly that reason.

I love peeling that plastic film off, I don't think I could stand not to.

Almost as much as I like taking the thing apart the day after the warranty runs out.