Those jobs that never get any easier

[Mick Bailey]

I was wondering what everyone else has on their list of jobs that come along with an attached sinking feeling. The ones that never get any easier, no matter how may different ways you've tried.

My least favourite job is removing snap-in can caps where they're forced in super-tight in a through-plated hole, and the tabs additionally bent over. Sometimes they come with a way-too small pad and nowadays lead-free solder. Kind of built with the intention of never being replaced. I look at those and think there's a really good chance that the pad will lift, even with a temp-controlled desolder machine and plenty of flux, or Chipquik.

[Jazz P Bass]

Any repair with a blown SMPS!

[DrGonz78]

To me it's those jobs that you should have said "No" to repair, but somehow the curious cat in us takes over. Speaking of cats, I always remember Enzo talking about a keyboard repair for this little old lady. Cat pee was all over it and it made any attempt to rid the smell seem futile. I too had a B52 AT100 show up on my bench with some nasty cat pee baked into the preamp board. I should have refused to service the damn thing but I just had to fix this poor amp. Every solder joint was corroded with the pee and the solder fumes were probably toxic. There is no easy way to ever fix a problem like that one and the whole process could not have been good for my health. Here are some pics I took. In the "after" picture I was not completely finished but it was still night and day!

[Mick Bailey]

Yellow pee crystals! I can smell 'em just by looking....

[Enzo]

I agree, the ones I should have said NO to. Over the years I developed my ability to decline repairs.

I turn away any Fender Rhodes, I hate working on them.

[JerkyPudding]

Speaker cabinets from frat houses. I charge extra to clean up beer/vomit/that which shall not be mentioned/etc. Usually the repair itself is easy, a blown driver or fuse. But cleaning up sticky funk....

[The Dude]

There are several models of Behringer powered mixers that are banned from my shop.

[Enzo]

Oh, like the 1280 or maybe 880, I forget, the molded plastic ones that are impossible to take apart?


I refused to take in MArshall MF350 (Mode 4) amps for a long time, and now I'll never see one again.

[Drewline]

My worst case scenarios: People that started off by tellling you that they were a good friend of the Boss, having known him forever, and expected you to fix whatever they had for free or next to nothing due to this longstanding relationship. Following close behind was all the wild & wacky stuff the Boss would bring to you to look at usually prefaced with: "It has to be the switch or a loose wire & the customer will be back this afternoon."

To quote Enzo: "Over the years I developed my ability to decline repairs." Our shop had a reputation of being able to repair most anything & guess what, most anything was what we would get in. Whatever other shops in town didn't work on they would send to us. The Boss his staff would take in anything & everything. Promise the world if you will.

Now that I've retired I taken to only working on equipment that interests me from people I know.

[g1]

"It has to be the switch or a loose wire & the customer will be back this afternoon."

lol, I think we must have worked for the same boss: "probably just a wire off". Or the trade-ins that he gave way too much for and were totally blown up (taken as trade without being tested).
Good times.

[Mick Bailey]

Declining repairs has done me a lot of good last financial year. I've just filed my tax return and despite having a more stringent policy of turning down repairs that I get an uneasy feeling about, I've cleared more income.

Except I just took on a mixer/amp repair that I was uneasy about when the owner described what was wrong/what he'd done. It turned up in pieces in a cardboard box and despite my better judgement took it in. Big mistake and hours down the pan trying to trace a fugitive fault. One I should have put a stop-loss on before it got out of hand. Sometimes it ends up being a battle of wills; man against machine, pride against defeat. Not a sensible economic model.

[Richard]

It's kind of strange when you get that enjoyment out of fixing things that are beyond most people, you like the challenge but realize it's kind of a crappy gig.

[nickb]

To me it's those jobs that you should have said "No" to repair, but somehow the curious cat in us takes over. Speaking of cats, I always remember Enzo talking about a keyboard repair for this little old lady. Cat pee was all over it and it made any attempt to rid the smell seem futile. I too had a B52 AT100 show up on my bench with some nasty cat pee baked into the preamp board. I should have refused to service the damn thing but I just had to fix this poor amp. Every solder joint was corroded with the pee and the solder fumes were probably toxic. There is no easy way to ever fix a problem like that one and the whole process could not have been good for my health. Here are some pics I took. In the "after" picture I was not completely finished but it was still night and day!

So do tell. When the moggy did the deed...



...was it on at the time?

[J M Fahey]

Anything subject to a corrosive atmosphere, which includes humidity and condensation (as much as you want available here in Buenos Aires).

The neverending joy of poor contacts and wires rotten *under* the plastic skin, invisible to the eye.

[The Dude]

......the molded plastic ones that are impossible to take apart?......

Those are the ones!