Field service cancelled

[Tom Phillips]

Ken,
Are you talking about the Electric Guitar Amplifier Handbook by Jack Darr? The first edition was Sam's Photofact Publication GAD-1, 1965. It was later expanded as the 4th edition and that version has recently been re-printed. Here is a link to a recent eBay auction
http://cgi.ebay.com/Electric-Guitar-...QQcmdZViewItem
Tom

[Enzo]

You think PV makes a lot of models? Wait until you add in their line of Architectural Audio and their Media Matrix stuff.

[ken]

Yes, I know. I have a house builder friend of mine who has the PV catalogs, he came over awhile back and wanted to know what I thought of the products.
I guess PV is trying to be 'all sounds to everyone'.

Some people are actually starting to collect the aluminum knob PV amps from the '70s, are you seeing this where you are? I have a customer who looks for this stuff.

Thank you Tom P., I was looking for a long time for that Sams book, I'm going to order one. I have a customer with a Baldwin transistor amp(!) he wants me to fix, and the schem was in the book I remembered. GT's Tube Amp Book copied some of the pages from this book into theirs... I wonder if Mr. Darr knows?

Ken

[Enzo]

By the way, I just got a call from Behr. They want to establish service network for their keyboards - fancy home units which would require doing service calls. If you have keyboard experience and this sounds interesting, let him know. it would add to your appeal. They will pay a higher rate and higher minimym and plan to send out board swap kits for field repair, so it ought to be easy money. I expressed potential interest, and GOmez says we will chat later - he's on vacation this coming week.

[ken]

I used to do keys... not much interest around here because everyone is so cheap. If you charge more than $20 or so for keys repair customers howl.
Must be all those damn Casios that sell every Xmas for $89... and die by March.

If it gets another look for me from Behr then I may be up for it.

Ken

[Enzo]

They pay $50 an hour normally, but are talking about like $60 for outside service, plus a two hour minimum billing, and mileage of some sort. They plan to send out a board kit so all you need do is isolate it to an assembly ans swap. Since it is warranty, it doesn't matter how cheap the customer might be.

believe me, the Behr folks are sending me a ton of work, and most of them are new customers too, so that's an added bonus.

[ken]

Cool...

I've been on Ebay looking for a hot air reflow machine and a chip sucker (vacuum pick and place machine), and I'm also going over my resume.

If things are as easy fixing keys as you say Behr does it, I'm up for that.

Ken

[Enzo]

I am only reporting how CHris described it, I expect to discuss it further with him next week.

[ken]

I called PV and Behr, now I'm in 'wait' mode.

Ken

[Enzo]

Just got a letter today from LOUD. It was my access codes for service literature. Apparently the SLM brands are not yet in the database, but they will be working on that over the winter. On the other hand I did not have access directly to the Mackie/Tapco/EAW stuff before.

[ken]

I got that letter too... if I can now fix Mackies my life would be much easier.

I talked to Behr... they want lots of SMT tooling and I don't have enough for them to be interested in me yet. I'm shopping for the gear and will try again when I have enough.

Ken

[Enzo]

I found a source for SMT gear that was not expensive and looked OK in the photos, I will dig it out and pass along

Their stuff is a lot of SMT. I change out jacks, tiny op amps, and the occasional TO220 on a power amp. Usually when their power modules go it is only the TO220s. So far the SMPSs have been great - tolerant of load faults, they shut themselves down when a power module shorts.

I have some rudimentray Pace SMT gear. But I have become a convert to chip quick. Melt the low temp solder on the old part, pluck it off, clean off the LT solder, mount the new part.

Here, I found it. I know absolutely nothing of these people except from their ad on a page in EDN, and then their web site. EDN is a trade journal for Elec Engineers. A couple of the pieces looked atytractive to me, and I was thinking of riskung a couple hundred to find out.

www.madelltech.com

[ken]

Thank you for the link, I've looked other places so maybe I can find something good here.

When I worked in the OEM plant, we used chip quick to pull larger chips off of boards for rework, as it was easier to use that than to risk board damage from heating up large chips with the air reflow. Our air reflow wasn't all that big, and sometimes you could reflow three sides of a chip OK and the fourth side didn't get hot enough to melt solder. Not to mention potential thermal damage to big chips.

I have to buy more things than I thought... I am going to have to make that part of the shop RoHS compliant since most of the new gear is made that way already.

Ken

[Enzo]

I don't know that YOU need to be ROHS yet. The OEMs went that way because of the global aspect of trade. You wanna sell in Europe, it hasta be ROHS. If yuo solder something on a ROHS board with plain old lead solder, it would no longer be compliant, but in WIsconsin or anywhere else in the USA, it is not yet a requirement.

[ken]

The problem is that many companies are now asking if you're compliant. For example, Behr asked me that when I called them. Besides, more and more new
stuff is now coming in 'compliant', like the new Peavey BW basket I just recieved and the Fender ultralight acoustic amp i just looked at. Soon, if you're not compliant, you may not get work it seems. After all, it may be argued that why would a company spend time and $$$ on compliance when their repair people may not be compliant themselves?

Ken