Strange and Lazy repair !!!

[jbmdisco]

Hi, I have received a power amp in today with a channel down. Just a normal run of the mill job, until I was told by the customer that it had been repaired a matter of weeks ago by the 'Dealer'. This repair has now failed.
I removed the top to check : 1. what had been repaired and 2. to perform my own diagnosis.
Initial view was that 1 power tranny had been replaced out of 4 + 4 on the right hand channel. The part used was not the recommended part nor does it 'partner' its' opposite. Now normally, as I have advised the customer here, I would replace all 8 of these o.t's as a matter of course and certainly not just 1.

Remembering that it has previously been replaced by the authorised dealer for this particular make.

Anyway, Having looked a bit further to the previous repair I looked at the remaining 3 npn's on the output side and noticed that all the legs had in fact been cut and soldered back together probably during the rebuild !!!!

Surely this has to be the laziest tech I have come across.

From removing the top cover and unscrewing the board from the chassis to having it on the bench took me all of 7 minutes !!! I reckoned the cutting and resoldering of the legs took much longer than carrying out a correct and proper procedure.

Has anyone else come across any half baked repairs such as this. My first advice for the customer was to take the amp back to the original repairer but as he has lost confidence in the methods used I now have the pleasure of another 18 power amps under my care !

I have tried to upload pictures of the 'repair' for you all to have a little look!

[J M Fahey]

Ugh !!!
Only justification to cut legs is when you are certain the part is dead, it makes removal much easier without wiggling.
But to avoid lifting the board .... lazyyyyy !!

[The Dude]

That's worse than lazy! The amp's reliability has also been compromised. A proper repair will now cost way more than it should because of someone's idiocy.

[jbmdisco]

My 'New' customer runs a business hiring out sound equipment and therefore reliability is key to all the amps, mixers and speakers. He has now brought in another 5 power amps to my 'shop that were repaired in the last 9 months by the same 'authorised' dealer/tech. At the moment these are all working but as the repairs carried out where for pretty much the same problems I have to audit the repairs and re-repair should I come across the same 'shoddy-ness' (good Scottish word for crap). All good for my little part-time 'hobby'.
I always take photographs of weird and wonderful repairs that have been carried out, mods etc. It makes good conversation. It would be good if the powers that be here could develop a separate page devoted to the weird and wonderful 'stop-gap' repairs that have been carried out with a photo gallery.
2 weeks ago I had an elderly vox guitar amp in with a bridge rectifier made from 4 different diodes, suspended in mid-air beside the power-cap - another disaster waiting to happen.

[bsco]

I don't consider myself to be a know-it-all by any means but I too have come across some wild and wacky repairs in the 4 years I have been doing repairs to music equipment.......screws missing, wires cut and then joined together with electrical Marrett's, duck tape, scotch tape....and even the white tape that one would use to secure a bandage or wound dressing.....wrong value parts, pots etc.......( I had one amp that had the plastic nut on the input jack glued in place with crazy glue)........hard wire jumpers running all over the place....pads lifted or missing.......the list goes on.....the problem is...if you take something in for repair and you see this kind of work, apparently it is your responsibility to fix it....even though you didn't create it....it comes down to a libaility issue as you were the last person to open the unit up...and neglected to fix it....at least that was what I was told.....
Cheers,
Bernie

[52 Bill]

We've all seen nightmares come in, I always assumed that it was done by some half-informed, half-capable owner trying to save money or needing to prove that he could fix it himself.

Sometimes these same half-informed and half-capable people get jobs in stores or open their own "business" and bring with them their total lack of professionalism. They usually don't last very long as working pros, but the damage that they can cause to equipment as well as to store reputations is tremendous. This is especially true in situations where there is no trained tech to supervise the hack's work. Hell, when I was a kid I did a lot of dumb things. Fortunately I had a trained tech (my dad) that taught me enough to keep me from killing myself and doing too much damage to my gear.

I'm sure that most small store owners would love to have someone that could fix electronics in-house. Not only can they generate additional income from the repairs, but they can also have their own items repaired without having to pay an outside service.

In any job there should be a certain amount personal pride or professionalism that makes you do a good job. And in some of the work that we do public safety becomes an issue. Morally and in some cases legally, we are responsible for the safety of the person using the things that we fix. When I was younger I used to fix my own brakes. Not a difficult task and the brake systems were simple enough that I felt safe in doing so. Now with all of the added complexities, I leave it to the trained specialists that have the correct equipment to do the job right.

As for the authorized repair center doing shoddy work, perhaps they feel that the reimbursement rate paid by the manufacturer does not allow them to spend the kind of time needed to do the job correctly. Or perhaps the service tech learned his craft by fixing his own gear.

[jamesmafyew]

We've all seen nightmares come in, I always assumed that it was done by some half-informed, half-capable owner trying to save money or needing to prove that he could fix it himself.

Exactly this, and many times said owner just refuses to own up to it. I have seen more than a few amps come in with the owner saying "yeah the previous tech did this and this but I don't think he did a good job" -- when I open the unit up, it looks like someone vomited Radio Shack components all over the insides. When I ask "who was the tech who did this?" I get an evasive answer like "I don't remember, it's been a while" or "I don't know, my bandmate took it in." Pretty obvious tip-off... you know that the bias supply was recapped but you don't know who did it? Yeah, right.

[nsubulysses]

DIY is funny and awesome. It gets you in some interesting situations sometimes.

I used to always try to fix everything myself first before taking it to a shop because I couldn't really afford the assumed $100-250 bill. Most things I managed to fix. A few I had to bring in

Feel good though. Haven't had a shop fix anything of mine in about 5 years. Some of those hacks might be up and comers........



Not owning up to it IS funny though

[jamesmafyew]

Here's an amazing example. Sunn Beta Lead, where a home user tried to replace the pots on the front panel because they were scratchy. He bought pots from RS with 3" solid shafts and then snapped them off. They didn't have right-angle legs like the originals, so he just ran some 16-gauge solid core yellow wire from the solder lugs.... all around the amp......... to the PCB half an inch away from the pots. Then he sold it on Craigslist, represented as "totally fine," to a guy who brought it to me because it was oscillating.

Behold:

[gui_tarzan]

I've run across a few dandys too. That's just embarrassing.

[Justin Thomas]

In defense of lazy repairs, I've done a few myself: to get through the gig! Then I do it right the nedt day. But if you're going to resell it, or send it out on the road, or even worse, take advantage of others' ignorance and pass it off to some kid, that's just wrong.

Justin

[olddawg]

I like the occasional fool who cuts 1/4" aluminum dowel to fuse lengths and inserts them in place of fuses.

[Justin Thomas]

Well, strange and lazy I understand... that's just stupid! I draw the line there... though when I bought my 67 Bassman, I took the 30A (not a typo!) fuse back to the store the next day and told them to check all incoming used amps. I got lucky - no issues with the correct fuse.
Keep in every gig bag: fire extinguisher.

Justin

[nsubulysses]

What about if you get in an amp all disassembled with all the parts and screws in an old coffee can or something, because the person brought it to another shop first and they refused to work on it because it was too difficult, not worth their time, too expensive, etc?? SURELY this has got to be one of the most strange and lazy repairs scenarios one must deal with!!

[52 Bill]

What about if you get in an amp all disassembled with all the parts and screws in an old coffee can or something, because the person brought it to another shop first and they refused to work on it because it was too difficult, not worth their time, too expensive, etc?? SURELY this has got to be one of the most strange and lazy repairs scenarios one must deal with!!

I find that when that happens, it's often a shop that offers free estimates. The customer opts to not have the amp fixed and they cut their losses by giving the amp back in pieces. Not nice, but understandable I guess.