Spending money on parts

[J M Fahey]

I don't think you are talking plain "politics" here, because what you speak about is unrelated to any political party and even more to any political person.
You are talking about Industrial, market, job and cost/price decisions.
Maybe that seems slightly outside of his specific area for, say, an Electronics, Metallurgical or Software Engineer (and many other specialities too), but for an Industrial Engineer it's at the core of everyday problems.
That's about 90% of problems thrown at them.
Yes, problems and decisions in that wide area are also deeply affected by Politics but .... what isn't?

[Enzo]

Well, issues that dredge up emotions, whatever we call them. The sort of contentious discussion that doesn;t further the goals of the forum, and for which space is provided at the bottom. Politics in that people take sides and pontificate, not really thinking political party specifically.

[Chuck H]

I'll take the blame... I started it with my overseas vs. quality post. Odd that I can defend it considering my angle on production amps... But the issue IS complicated from many angles. I'm still all for buying whatever domestic goods are offered, and I'd like amplifiers to remain one of them. To get the discussion back on amps...

Other than the silly high priced "custom shop" products I don't know if you can even buy a Fender product made in the USA anymore. Isn't 90% of their line of both guitars and amps made in Mexico now??? Is there even a major tube guitar amplifier manufacturer in the USA anymore?

[J M Fahey]

Well, Mesa for sure, and probably the "better" Peaveys.
Can't think of anybody else.
Not getting into Politics but plain Company History, Fenders *were* mostly built by "Mexicans", although physically in California.
When I started getting into this, some 40 years ago, I was amazed at finding inside mythical (for us) Fenders all those little stick-on inspection labels, signed "Teresa" or "Dolores".
Later they sort of moved the factory a few miles South, and Teresa and Dolores could keep building them, the other side of the border.

[Ronsonic]

I couldn't possibly specialize in modern musical industry electronics repair because when the above mentioned guy/gal walks into my shop with a broken amp and says "Hey maaan, how much to fix it?" my answer would be something like "$50 to find out. Applied to the repair should you decide to use my services." I know the response at that point.

It isn't that bad. We tell them $60 to diagnose and almost always get a pre-approval to $150* and take in the work.

Most of our work is things like busted, dirty jacks, sheared off encoders and the like. And customers don't mind paying for that. There is the daily IQ test, but mostly the replacement cost is high enough that people pay.

* That's if it is just the counter wench** checking it in. If one of the tech's looks at it we might be able to shoot a more precise guesstimate. 90% of the dirty pots, bad jacks and assorted gadgets that fall off this stuff can be done for $150 and it saves time waiting for estimate approvals.

** I think that's the official job title***.

*** Unless of course, she objects, because we really, really want her to be happy****.

**** Women are much more successful than men at asking men for money***** so I want them happy.

***** I really like my counter wenches and one of my unofficial duties is protecting them from job stress. Worst era in my career was when we had a verbally abusive jackass, a real Dick, in the ownership department who would dump on the girls.

[Ronsonic]

KM6ZX, you make a lot of good points. I'm especially interested in your experience with sourcing gear from companies eager to accommodate your needs.

This also was interesting:

The major brands never learned about these newer markets and don't realize the slow down in sales in the west could be doubly compensated for if they paid any attention what is happening elsewhere.

A lot of my customers are touring pro's and are traveling to places they might never have expected even a few years ago. Lately I've been amazed by some of the tour itineraries my guys have been telling me about. As one put it, "the economy doesn't suck everywhere and we're just going to the places that are doing well."

[Ronsonic]

We've stemmed the tide of the disposable units actually seeing the city dump in a couple of ways. When we are instructed to scrap units by the manufacturer, e.g. small and/or cheap guitar amps, we WILL in fact perform the simple repairs that are often required (usually cold solder joints, a bad jack, switch or power IC; in the case of cheap tube amps, it's usually due to the crappy tubes), and take them home, give them away to friends, etc. For the bigger stuff, we have a couple of very resourceful Polish musicians who come around to take the units and fix them for themselves and their fellow Polish musicians in the community. Because time vs. $$$ is the predominant factor in a retail shop, and they have lots of free time to tinker, they can eventually repair the units..... or not. I've never actually really asked them. They extend their gratitude by performing the occasional impromptu accordian performance in the lobby and bring us a seemingly endless supply of Polish candy. It makes us feel that much better that we are helping them, as well as taking a slightly more "green" approach.

That is very much like our experience. All my nephews and nieces have amps and my church is surprisingly well equipped for our budget.

We don't get the Polish guys, we've got Mexicans. A lot of the time, we'll sell off a load of broke stuff by the trailer full. The things that our Mexican guys insist MUST be repaired are older Crown amps and Korg M1s. Everything else they are willing to replace, but those items must be kept running and they always pay cash and the 12 year olds do all the talking. I expect in a couple of decades there will be an entire class of savvy second generation businessmen.

[km6xz]

What small scale production hand made amp has a 5% of lower failure rate within the warranty period? What hand made exotic car has fewer initial delivery defects and defects during warranty period? Being involved in both ends, high end esoteric gear and cars, a one or two man operation can't, hasn't to date to my knowledge, been able to produce highly reliable products. On you own amps, you would need to sell 10 times as many with no defects to get to the level of the industry average. Even Behringer despite very low cost light weigh parts have a good record, about the same as Roland which has always had a good rep. A lot are brought back but a heck of a lot more are sold. If the car industry could get close to the electronics industry in number of initial delivery defects they would be more profitable and trusted more.
There is a great deal of difference between building a cool prototype 10 times and having a design refined by an experienced industrial designer, the QC engineers, the software QC team. PTP has a worse track record than SMD by far, for many reasons so it is used for reliability reasons and for cost reasons.
If you have been to China to see why board productions is dominated by China, for high and low end, it becomes obvious. Automation. Theirs is always a generation or two newer, higher speed and more accurate. It was a national plan 2 decades ago, the government figured that it would be relatively cheap to take over a major industry with growth potential for a modest investment by giving the edge to Chinese producers. Grants and loans were made available to stay one or two steps ahead. It only took 1 or 2 product cycles for manufacturers to realize they could not compete with the major retooling needed every 1-2 years to stay in the game. They started contracting out sub assemblies, than assemblies, and finally whole finished units.
Mackie took the small mixer market by storm with the 16xx boards, less than $1600, reliable, single pc board units with automated chassis work. The regular names in the market were twice as much and less reliable. Greg's big idea was to invest in automation which was not done yet in that market of small boards.
A few years later Behringer had a brighter idea...don't invest in automation, because these companies were too small to keep up with the Chinese. Mackie did well but could not afford to retool still being a relatively small business. Within a couple years of the big move to Chinese pc boards by other companies including the traditially hand assembled 1 board per channel console makers in the UK who dominated the market before Mackie had the big idea.
Behringer started having entire finished units done in China and focused on engineering, with about the highest percentage of total employees as degreed engineers of any company. They did not make anything after the German production stopped. For a few years Behringer had the small board to themselves but eventually everyone started rebranding Chinese designed boards, not just sending pc and assembly jobs to China. Now, no one can compete, if you want to hit the price point that sells, it is pretty obvious part or all of the production will have to be in China. It was smart industrial policy by the Chinese government. It only took a few hundred million to buy an industry, it has returned trillions.

There is still a market, a limited one, that wants specialized gear and accepts that it is not cookie cutter in design or, as expected, polished.
But the market is also on the verge of being saturated. Every small town has a amp mechanic who can only work on simple tube amps, and no one equipped by traning or facility to repair keyboards or digital home studio gear or whatever. But even in a saturated market, a creative innovated person can carve out a chunk of everyone else's market share. There must be 10,000 tube amp only repair shops and a couple dozen competent shops to do everything else. "Everything else" is what the majority of customers buy however.

[Enzo]

I learned a long time ago not to bother with estimates. After the first few times trying to come up pwith an accurate one without actually doing the repair, I would always find that my estimate of $89 would be met with, "Oh cool, I just didn;t want to get a $300 bill." Yeah well it was never in danger of getting that high, it is a solid state peavey, pal.

SO now I get a working budget.

[Ronsonic]

KM6XZ, you touch on one of my rants ... In my area we have a couple of these "tube amp specialists" and ya know what I call them, "amateurs." One of them was in my shop looking for help diagnosing a Twin reissue with a dead reverb drive. He just couldn't figure it out because of the PCB. But this jackhole is competing for my business. Another brought in the solid state Crate that was his personal one-hand amp. He had destroyed the traces on the board where he had attempted to replace a couple of pots. Then he complained bitterly about the price comparing it to what he charges. "I can solder but not on tissue paper" was his gripe. No, he can't solder. He should put down the damn iron and get the hell away from my business.

I don't mind genuine DIY type amateurs at all. They're good guys and that's how I started. I'll help them out some and sort out the stuff they get in trouble with. But the superannuated tube monkeys and flakes with the Gerald Weber Library who hold themselves out as professional techs can really piss me off sometimes.

[J M Fahey]

**** Women are much more successful than men at asking men for money****

Amen Brother

Why oh why did God have to make them that way ?

Or make us so weak ?

Seriously now, I thing you might be *writing* a marketing book or two.

[km6xz]

The best way to handle that is ignore them, they might get some customers but they really do not impact a competent tech because there are a great many things they can't do so the customer eventually has to go shopping for a more well versed tech.

It think it is a matter of ethics. I've gotten a reputation, and called names a number of times for not being patient with people who are obviously clueless who are trying to undo their own screw ups on customer gear. If someone is working on their own gear, and takes responsibility...I have no problem and will help any way I can.
Guys who detail a long list of parts swapped out and the thing still does not work, finally asking what it wrong with a customer unit, I may not be very understanding at all. Shotgunning and never diagnosing the problem, just throwing parts at it, not only increased the cost to the customer but increases the odds of making the repair harder by introducing ambiguity and chances of incorrect orientation, polarity or connections. If someone charges, they have a moral obligation of knowing what the hell they are doing. It happens in all fields, medicine, auto repair, home improvement contractors, whatever, a major portion of customer expense is this kind of fraud. I am not sure it is a good idea for people on the forum to enable these people, it ought to be focused on hobbyists seeking assistance.

[Chuck H]

What small scale production hand made amp has a 5% of lower failure rate within the warranty period?

What mass produced amp does? Where does this statistic come from? What is the research criteria? Perhaps you could produce a link to the data and test method? Does it factor in things like several production runs of HR series Fender amps being shipped with faulty power supply filters that failed within a couple of years? Now it seems another run may have been shipped with faulty PT fuses. Are these kinds of mass failures figured out as non workmanship circumstances. Oh, they probably wouldn't count since these amps only have a limited warranty (and three year warranty is US$100 extra). And most high end builders have a limited lifetime warranty at their selling price.

I'll concede that there is the slightly greater possibility of a cold solder joint in a small MFG's product. But not a major component failure. Reliability does go somewhat hand in hand with repairability.

If you have been to China to see why board productions is dominated by China, for high and low end, it becomes obvious. Automation. Theirs is always a generation or two newer, higher speed and more accurate.

Which isn't part of the problem. Inferior structural criteria and parts are. High speed and accuracy aren't worth a squirt of piss in a fire if bad parts are being assembled on flimsy boards attached by brittle ribbon cable. Thin boards and traces combined with board mounted sockets make very poor bedfellows.

Behringer started having entire finished units done in China and focused on engineering

Smart move. There is nothing wrong with Chinese production quality or capabilities. It's the bottom line design and components that are problematic. If not within some crappy one year or limited five year warranty then very soon after.

There is still a market, a limited one, that wants specialized gear and accepts that it is not cookie cutter in design or, as expected, polished.
But the market is also on the verge of being saturated.

Just to be clear, I'm not even including "Ziek's Shade Tree Amps" in my position. The guy who builds one off or entirely from one work bench. That would be guy's like me. I HAVE built amps for sale. I DON'T build amps for sale for my living. One man operations are indeed subject to all manor of difficulty that would detriment product reliability.

The companies I'm talking about are at least a little bigger than that and have earned there way into a greater market share with product excellence and desireable features. I mentioned some names in an earlier post. AND... FWIW... Some of these companies DO have boards partly or wholly assembled overseas, to their own high quality specifications.

I thought I was humble enough in my previous post. Admitting that I'm a bit of a crank about the subject. Try to at least be gracious and not fault my position. Which has validities that your failing to acknowledge.

[km6xz]

What mass produced amp does? Where does this statistic come from? What is the research criteria? Perhaps you could produce a link to the data and test method? Does it factor in things like several production runs of HR series Fender amps being shipped with faulty power supply filters that failed within a couple of years? Now it seems another run may have been shipped with faulty PT fuses. Are these kinds of mass failures figured out as non workmanship circumstances. Oh, they probably wouldn't count since these amps only have a limited warranty (and three year warranty is US$100 extra). And most high end builders have a limited lifetime warranty at their selling price.

I'll concede that there is the slightly greater possibility of a cold solder joint in a small MFG's product. But not a major component failure. Reliability does go somewhat hand in hand with repairability.



Which isn't part of the problem. Inferior structural criteria and parts are. High speed and accuracy aren't worth a squirt of piss in a fire if bad parts are being assembled on flimsy boards attached by brittle ribbon cable. Thin boards and traces combined with board mounted sockets make very poor bedfellows.



Smart move. There is nothing wrong with Chinese production quality or capabilities. It's the bottom line design and components that are problematic. If not within some crappy one year or limited five year warranty then very soon after.



Just to be clear, I'm not even including "Ziek's Shade Tree Amps" in my position. The guy who builds one off or entirely from one work bench. That would be guy's like me. I HAVE built amps for sale. I DON'T build amps for sale for my living. One man operations are indeed subject to all manor of difficulty that would detriment product reliability.

The companies I'm talking about are at least a little bigger than that and have earned there way into a greater market share with product excellence and desireable features. I mentioned some names in an earlier post. AND... FWIW... Some of these companies DO have boards partly or wholly assembled overseas, to their own high quality specifications.

I thought I was humble enough in my previous post. Admitting that I'm a bit of a crank about the subject. Try to at least be gracious and not fault my position. Which has validities that your failing to acknowledge.

You seem to feel that QCM is a secret or guesswork. The 5% figure was the wild outside figure of worst case MI/pro audio companies, that is 50,000PPM and would generate a bad rep in a week if 50 out of 1000 got on the internet and ragged the company.
May I ask a question? How much time have you spent in or around manufacturing, or ISO certified companies? One of the reasons larger mass produced companies have better return rates is because Quality Management is a science and a requirement and have improved quality dramatically over small boutique companies in any field. Each company keeps close tabs of the return rate, the accrual rates and compares to competitors and for budget needs. Normally statistics are centered around a standard of complaints as a percentage of sale price of an item. Most publicly held companies publish this figure in their annual report. By any metric, those who have made it an issue(all larger companies or they would not be a larger company), quality has improved greatly over the "good old days when things were built heavy".
In MI Roland is about on top in this regard but some like Behringer are not too far from it at 15,000 PPM. Industry average was much higher 25 years ago, which is why so many repair shops could survive on warranty repairs despite fewer unit sales. Other industries have done even better such as the auto industry in improving quality.
I think the problem you are having is equating heavier parts as "quality" when that is not how it is measured and in fact has a negative impact on quality.
Heavier items have to be more structurally robust to attain a given level of integrity. Movement/vibration coupled with mass is a killer for reliability. You are also apparently thinking of returns back in the day when it was expected to bring a unit back for preventative maintenance. For example if tubes wear out. That is OK for some as a cost of ownership but that is a lack of quality and IS not acceptable to the majority of customers. For most part, wear items have been essentially eliminated for that and many other reasons. We all expect cheap consumer items to just work. But a lot of people give more leeway for large esoteric items. If my studio gear was a well built for the application as most people would assume being large heavy and expensive I would not have needed to spend $250,000 a year on in-house maintenance(that was back in the day when that sort of cash would buy a number of 3 bedroom suburban homes). But now, if a $50 MP3 player fails in a year the company is bashed at every opportunity.
How much copper to put on boards, enough to make it reliable and not a bit more. More causes as much problem as too little. That was engineers do. It is not an accident that professional engineers with good QMS departments turn out products that work well, cheaper and with more functionality. Behringer is a good example, it is not an accident that they produce a rack mount compressor (just as an example) that performs aw well and for as long as competitors costing 5 times as much. It was designed with that intent. You might lament how light the chassis is, or use of 100% SMD, but it works and continues to for a long time. Compare that to small production boutique compressors for $1500-3000. Yes they are heavier, and use more rigid panels, and in some cases have been specs(but not always) but there is no way a single designer is going to be so well versed with both electronic design and product design or or sound characteristics and be a master of QMS. I doubt any of the high end boutique studio gear companies has the low failure rate of full manufacturing companies. Companies with larger volume but still small might have good reputations but the customers are different than other consumers, they overlook lack of reliability as a price of high-end gear. The worst company I've dealt with in the US for failure rate was Alesis when it produced mechanical tape decks and mixers made in the US. They were just too small at first to have QM, in their thinking but when their volume increased a great deal they were really slow to institute a Quality Management system. Their competitors were all large enough to have weathered the growing pains of going from a small niche company to be a real manufacturing company. Poor management and poor QC did them in and they went into bankruptcy. The cost of fixing their design and assembly mistakes in the field really hurt their profits. When they reformed as just a rebrander, their Chinese suppliers turned out to be much more quality conscious but still dirt cheap.

One problem for brands who depend on China to design and source parts for larger heavier items like guitar amps is that they are not in the customer use loop. They are designing based on specs and features but probably have never seen the abuse that a gigging rocker submits their gear to. So there is still a mismatch between design and actual application but that will change very quickly with more understanding of the environment the gear will work in. They are producing more qualified engineers per year than the US has in its entire workforce so more and more of the gear sold in the west is not designed at all in the west but ordered as a list of specs and everything is left to the designers in Asia to design, and choose parts.
In markets where there is a spec for high reliability there is not problem, such as aircraft engines, ships, lab and machine gear, robotics etc, low cost AND high quality are surely there.
It used to be that only two countries were self-contained, with all major and minor industries needed for internal needs from raw materials, heavy industry, light industry, components etc was the US after about 1925 until the mid 70s and the Soviet Union from about 1928 to 1985. Now, there are none but there are no countries which can conduct business without out the involvement of China. It is amazing how quickly all forms of manufacturing and materials involve some aspects of Chinese development. Twenty five years. Get used to it, it is not going to reverse any time soon.

[Chuck H]

You seem to feel that QCM is a secret or guesswork. The 5% figure was the wild outside figure of worst case MI/pro audio companies, that is 50,000PPM and would generate a bad rep in a week if 50 out of 1000 got on the internet and ragged the company.
May I ask a question? How much time have you spent in or around manufacturing

Some. Not as much as you. But probably more recently. Regardless... I expected you to come from this aspect. You assume the figure because it's the ideal. I'm afraid the game has changed. Figures don't exist simply because they should. These kinds of numbers are manipulated on behalf of the company to entice share holders all the time. And the nature of that manipulation becomes more obscure at every overlooked opportunity. Go ahead, just ask any major corporation about how their track record compares and I'm sure they can produce several expertly prepared charts and graphs which demonstrate their worth.

Quality Management is a science and a requirement and have improved quality dramatically over small boutique companies in any field. Each company keeps close tabs of the return rate, the accrual rates and compares to competitors and for budget needs. Normally statistics are centered around a standard of complaints as a percentage of sale price of an item. Most publicly held companies publish this figure in their annual report.

We ARE in the information age. Numbers are easily obtained and the crunching is easily done by any computer. These practices are no longer exclusive to large corporations.

By any metric, those who have made it an issue(all larger companies or they would not be a larger company)

Right... And the biggest, meanest monkey has all the banannas too. Ethics (or lack of) also play a role in the success of business enough that any thinking person won't ignore the possibility. Big tobacco doesn't care if you get cancer and big oil doesn't care about the environment.

quality has improved greatly over the "good old days when things were built heavy".

I didn't say anything about building things "heavy" or that "heavy" was better. I indicated that too light was bad. The difference isn't subtle if your paying attention.

I think the problem you are having is equating heavier parts as "quality" when that is not how it is measured and in fact has a negative impact on quality.
Heavier items have to be more structurally robust to attain a given level of integrity. Movement/vibration coupled with mass is a killer for reliability.

I don't disagree with this... Not completely anyhow. Here we are with the "heavy" again... I'm not suggesting that over rated parts are better. I'm saying that under rated parts are bad.

You are also apparently thinking of returns back in the day when it was expected to bring a unit back for preventative maintenance. For example if tubes wear out. That is OK for some as a cost of ownership but that is a lack of quality and IS not acceptable to the majority of customers.

Funny you would mention the tubes as most of the budget tube gear is equipped with really crappy tubes. More on this in a sec...

For most part, wear items have been essentially eliminated for that and many other reasons. We all expect cheap consumer items to just work.

You mean wear items like power supply filters and tubes? Well, if a manufacturer offers a crappy enough warranty they can claim that a paper clip has the strength of a steel gurter. Short warranty periods are key to demonstrating high reliability rates with respect to inferior construction and component quality. Your not going to slip that past anyone.

How much copper to put on boards, enough to make it reliable and not a bit more. More causes as much problem as too little.

Yeah. We all hate it when the traces are too heavy. Seriously? How heavy does a copper trace have to be before it's mass becomes an adhesion or any other issue? OK, that was just spiteful. But really?

That was engineers do. It is not an accident that professional engineers with good QMS departments turn out products that work well, cheaper and with more functionality.

With the caveate "within the warranty period". Warranties on budget gear are proportionately crappy. This is paramount. Why sell a product once a decade when you can sell one twice??? What MFG wouldn't take any opportunity to reduce the longevity of their product if they knew they were within acceptible parameters?

Behringer is a good example, it is not an accident that they produce a rack mount compressor (just as an example) that performs aw well and for as long as competitors costing 5 times as much. It was designed with that intent.

There will always be shining stars. Peavey is another IMHO.

The worst company I've dealt with in the US for failure rate was Alesis when it produced mechanical tape decks and mixers made in the US. They were just too small at first to have QM, in their thinking but when their volume increased a great deal they were really slow to institute a Quality Management system.

There will always be bummers too.

Chinese suppliers turned out to be much more quality conscious but still dirt cheap.

Must I... I didn't say there was anything wrong with Chinese products. The problem is in the designs they're instructed to build and the parts they're instructed to use. If you tell your gardener to fertilize your lawn with peanut butter it's not his fault when your lawn dies.

One problem for brands who depend on China to design and source parts for larger heavier items like guitar amps is that they are not in the customer use loop. They are designing based on specs and features but probably have never seen the abuse that a gigging rocker submits their gear to. So there is still a mismatch between design and actual application but that will change very quickly with more understanding of the environment the gear will work in. They are producing more qualified engineers per year than the US has in its entire workforce so more and more of the gear sold in the west is not designed at all in the west but ordered as a list of specs and everything is left to the designers in Asia to design, and choose parts.

Right. This is also part of the problem I'm indicating. I also forsee it changing as you do, improving.

In markets where there is a spec for high reliability there is not problem, such as aircraft engines, ships, lab and machine gear, robotics etc, low cost AND high quality are surely there.

I did allude to that in another post in this thread.

It used to be that only two countries were self-contained, with all major and minor industries needed for internal needs from raw materials, heavy industry, light industry, components etc was the US after about 1925 until the mid 70s and the Soviet Union from about 1928 to 1985. Now, there are none but there are no countries which can conduct business without out the involvement of China. It is amazing how quickly all forms of manufacturing and materials involve some aspects of Chinese development. Twenty five years. Get used to it, it is not going to reverse any time soon.

Agree. But not really the issue outside of my mention that everyone should buy domestic whenever applicable if they want to keep living where they do.

I did offer some humility prior. I even suggested you might practice some grace as much of my position is valid. I was ready to agree to disagree but you continue to ignore the details of my position and suggest that I like big heavy amps painted in red white and blue built by untrained garage shop flunkies. Your expertise and your experiences (many of which I've enjoyed reading about BTW) don't seem to exclude you from some alterior need to be the only voice in the room. Even at the expense of absolute correctness, be it factual or etiquette. I am agreeing to disagree to the points we don't line up on. I've made my points clear enough. Have your last word if you must.