Critical thinking... Or lack there of

[Wilder Amplification]

Another personal favorite of mine...you're playing a show and some joe shmoe guitar player comes up to you on the break -

"Dude...the power tube overdrive you got on that thing sounds badass! I like how you've got it biased hot."

"Um...actually it's biased around 60-65% and it's all preamp overdrive."

"Nah dude...there's just no way. That has to be power tube overdrive on a hot biased amp. What kinda tubes you run in that thing?"

"JJ KT88s."

"Wow...I'm gonna have to get some of those so my amp will sound like that."

"Um...OK dude."

[octal]

It always irks (erks?) me how people think that it's the knowledge of these circuits that we are charging for.
Chuck

As someone who is in the electronics repair industry (not guitar amps) I don't see anything wrong with charging for a 'simple' repair which your knowledge allowed you to diagnose. I always get the "well, my engineer friend who works at Motorola (insert name of company here) says it's probably just a bad resistor." OK, show me which one is bad, and I'll change it here on the spot!

Charging an hourly rate seems like perhaps not the best way to measure labor in many repair situations. Why should a skilled, knowledgeable technician who can quickly identify and replace faulty parts make less on a job than a hack who throws handfuls of parts at the problem and takes all day to solve it?

[Tom Phillips]

There is a minimum charge associated with any service. That is, unless the owner wants to comp a good customer. This pays for your dedicated space, specialized equipment, parts you locate and purchase in advance and the time you take to improve your knowledge base. Of course, just about everyone who has read this far into the tread knows this already.

A good tech's skills certainly do merit a higher hourly rate of pay. If that were not true then pro sports stars, brilliant surgeons, DMV workers and telephone sanitizers would all be paid the same wage. Unfortunately, the hourly profit is not equal to the charged shop rate. This is particularly hard for some would be customers to understand. They think you net $50 per hour. When I figure out how to get paid for the time it takes to set up appointments, return calls and deal with chatty customers, then it will be easy to make a living in the guitar amp repair business.

Interesting thread,
Tom

[R.G.]

As someone who is in the electronics repair industry (not guitar amps) I don't see anything wrong with charging for a 'simple' repair which your knowledge allowed you to diagnose. I always get the "well, my engineer friend who works at Motorola (insert name of company here) says it's probably just a bad resistor." OK, show me which one is bad, and I'll change it here on the spot!

Charging an hourly rate seems like perhaps not the best way to measure labor in many repair situations. Why should a skilled, knowledgeable technician who can quickly identify and replace faulty parts make less on a job than a hack who throws handfuls of parts at the problem and takes all day to solve it?

Old engineer's joke: Engineer called in to consult at a factory which was stalled because something didn't work. Engineer walked around, then asked for a hammer. When supplied, hit pipe with hammer. Factory started working. Engineer's bill, $1000.00. Factory boss replied that $1000 seemed excessive for hitting a pipe with a hammer, please itemize bill. Engineer itemization:
- Hitting pipe with hammer: $1.00
- Knowing which pipe to hit: $999.00

[Chuck H]

Octal,

+++, but...

I didn't say or imply that expertise isn't a valid point of cost for service. Sometimes it works out that way and we know when to play that card. But sometimes it's just drudgery like any other job. As pointed out, cost of operation has a lot to do with any shop rate and you don't always get that rate for every hour. I was talking about contract work. Your already hired for your expertise and now there's a "job" to do. Sometimes it's banging a pipe and sometimes (for guitar amp repairs) it's replacing chassis soldered caps and two tube sockets. The latter pays less than the former but you can't charge an ample rate for every repair. Either because it's simply not the going rate or because it's a regular customer that can't understand why a bank of caps and two tube sockets costs more than an OT. Good for you if you get to be a hero every moment of your day and shine with enough genius that all you do is bang pipes, but for most of us there is still a bunch of real bread and butter work to do.

Chuck

Edit: I will admit that my "knowledge" is limited enough that I actually DON'T charge for it. I bid T&M whenever possible. And to all the good techs here that have paid their dues in full, I wish you many pipes to bang.

[mike_mccue]

I just want to throw out a big THANK YOU to all you helpful and knowledgeable tech people here.

You all have been very helpful over the years.

Thanks a bunch!!!

best regards,
mike

[Enzo]

Octal, in the repair biz, if it takes me 10 minutes to fix some simple thing, the customer doesn't get a bill for 10 minutes labor. There is an hour or hour and a half minimum with most repairs.

And even at that, you fix something for a hour labor and the inexperienced clod down the street charged 2 hours, he isn't getting paid more. He needed the 2 hours for the repair. In two hours you as an experienced pro could easily write 5 hours of work. He can't.

[Tom Phillips]

Lot's of truth in all these posts.

Quite frequently customers will say. I think it's just a bad {Insert simple problem here}. I don't want to run up a bill so just fix that problem. Then while they are on their way out the door they say. "While you have the amp on the bench please check everything so I won't have any problems later." When you open up the amp you find all manner of s#!t. Next you discover that Mr. "I can't afford much to repair this amp" has been frequently dropping big bucks to acquire vintage equipment.

Oh well. That's the way it goes.
No matter what. I just do an honest job and usually don't charge straight time for every hour I work. Research time is on me because I love restoring old amps. This works because I have a day job and I can choose the work I accept. The situation changes when you are supporting yourself solely with the business. Then you need to develop fast efficient work habits and you cannot afford freebys.

Once and a while I let something slip in that I shouldn't and I end up spending lots of un-billable time to save it. Right now I have an AM tube radio from a 1956 Ford T-Bird on my bench. I now need to do an alignment. I was surprised to find out that I have all the required equipment but it has taken a lot of research time to figure out what I need to do. When I got the original call the man said "I think it just needs some tubes." Check out the attached before and after pictures to see what I found inside.

Regards,
Tom

[imaradiostar]

When I was a mechanic I was paid hourly and the other guys in the shop were paid "flat rate." This meant I ended up doing a lot of the crazier troubleshooting jobs that they didn't want to do because they'd loose money. After a while I started to see patterns and I was able to diagnose some pretty strange problems (usually electronic in nature) within minutes. Did I then charge only a few minutes when other mechanics or shops were completely unable to solve the problem?

My point is that I think it's fair to charge for the knowledge you possess. That said I always tried to share information with the other mechanics I worked with so that they could make money if they saw that problem one day. I've seen more than one thread here where a repair professional says "I just worked on a new Geschnorkus amp and R11-R14 failed and that caused Q3 and 4 to fail." That sort of post really shows that some of us are here to learn and help others to learn.

On the flip side- how many times have I asked stupid questions and I happen upon the thread later and say "I can't believe I asked that!"

I'm thankful for all the people that have put up with my stupid questions and answered them!

jamie

[R.G.]

I have an outside opinion, as I don't make my living repairing amps or anything else. However, one of my friends is an experienced, knowledgeable tech with a reputation that extends outside his local town. For instance, he gets sought out and paid for being road tech for several touring acts. I mention this as shorthand for his credentials.

He was seeing all of the customer miseries you catalog. Probably he sees the ones you haven't put up yet. One Christmas I had some repair agreements printed up for him. These were just a carbon-paper pad with order tickets on them, but they had specific spaces for things like
[] Repair all defects found.
[] Restore to best practical condition.
[] Make minimum repairs to get it functioning again.
[] Only repair this item: _______________________
[] Call with estimate before repairing.
[] Do not exceed $_________________
Note: there is a minimum bench fee of $_________
Repair rates are cost of repair parts plus $50.00 per hour labor.

and spaces for customer name, address, telephone, and an ageement that the equipment would be sold to recover repair charges if left more than 90 days after repairs were completed, which is the general law in this state.

In today's conditions, I think I'd add a check box for "restore with vintage parts" and a warning that this would cost more for the parts and labor.

It's all about setting expectations. If a customer gets what they expect, they're generally happy. If they get surprised, more often than not it's a problem.

[Ronsonic]

Customer expectation is the biggest thing. Most really have no idea what happens behind the wall. Some fear being ripped off somehow (oddly enough it is always guys in the auto body trade who have given me the most trouble like that). Others expect something like the automotive service model. Some just go away to wait with apprehension and hope struggling within their hearts.

Funny one was the guy who picked up his amp and when given the baggie full of leaky caps and drifted resistors and such said "wow, you guys really did replace all that stuff you said you would."

[paggerman]

accident

I'm confused.
- no, you didn't know they used to specified thermal wire stripping to avoid nicking?
- no, you didn't know nicking was a common cause of breaking soldered wires?
- no, you put more parts inside your chassis than are in military/space equipment?
- no, you don't work for a space/rockets place?
- no, you just put in so many parts that the wires are prone to breakage?
or
- some of the above?
- most of the above?
- other reason not listed?

I'm confused about that. Help me out.

But I really think you'd like the PTS-10 if you tried it. And was the skin effect info useful to you?

And how's that impedance measurment going? I'd like to know.

I think a bit of wee just came out. This is the funniest thread ever, which is weird because it's supposed to be a rant about ingrates. I love your work, guys; I have learnt so much from the main protaganists in this thread (RG, Enzo, Wilder, Bruce) and others (Merlin, Conner, tubeswell, RWood) hope I didn't forget anyone, that I am now on my fourth build, only the first of which followed a pre-tested design. My second was an adaptation of the AA4 using RWood's tip (and sounds great to my cloth ears), third is an adaptation of a Gibson GA5 using 2*6AT6 and a 6BW6 (still not happy with this one). Number four is a mix up using Merlin's switchable cascade/parallel pre-amp, a James tone stack and cathodyne PI. Valves will be the Russian 12ax7 and EL84 equivalents. The PT and chassis are recovered from radiograms for all but the first build. Couldn't have done any of them without this forum. Now here's the question that Google can't answer - how do I convince the wife that I need to keep all my amps and that they are pleasing to the eye when deftly arranged on top of the bookshelf?

Thanks everyone.

[Chuck H]

Now here's the question that Google can't answer - how do I convince the wife that I need to keep all my amps and that they are pleasing to the eye when deftly arranged on top of the bookshelf?

I use the old 'cave man' method and hit my wife over the head with a club. Naahhh, just kidding... But don't get me wrong, I'd whoop my wifes a$$ if I thought I could take her.

Chuck

[dkevin]

Sure hope (for your sake) your wife hasn't learned how to read yet

[J M Fahey]

Do not count even on that, for safety. Not even on language barriers, even wide ones.
A long time ago my cousin Jorge moved from Argentina to L.A.
A short time later he married a Japanese girl, who spoke little English and zero Spanish.
In the middle of an argument, it's easy to go back to original language, so she told him something in Japanese and he answered "China de mierda" ...
She said nothing, but 3 nights later, when he returned from work, she hit him in the head with a book ... a dictionary.
She had written down the pronunciation of what he had said, had spent 3 days looking through a Spanish Dictionary (which stated the phonetic pronunciation along the word) until she found the meaning.
I think no guy on earth would have wasted time in such a way.
Ah! What does it mean ? : "F*ck*ng Chinese", Chinese being in this case any slanted eyes people.