Anyone else walking away from repairs?

[Randall]

man, I got my butt handed to me on this one! I don't tell customers with the low end stuff that their amp is crap, I tell them the problem with trying to repair a lot of modern robotics-built for a price point and pushed out of Guitar Center stuff is that the cost of fixing it is going to not be worth it when they can go get another one for at about the same price. I don't do SMD because 1. I can't see it, my senior eyes are too bad, and 2. I don't have the skills or equipment to replace a centipede IC. And to my knowledge there is no one else doing that in my area.

Maybe things used to be different, but a couple of years ago when I worked at a Behringer authorized shop, all they did was throw boards at us.

But I will heed some good advice and think of it differently. I just have never opened a Chinese amp and thought, "Niiiiice!"

[Leo_Gnardo]

People like to say things like they design then just to last until the warranty ends, but really. How about all those 30 year old peavey solid state amps, still cranking out, and STILL SUPPORTED.

Yep, just got some Peavey stacked-coaxial pots for midrange on Renown 400 & similar amps. $9.50 each, but where else ya gonna get 'em? The carbon track actually flaked off the old pots, I dissected 'em and looked. Bizarre.

So . . . after installing one it wasn't long before it started to misbehave. Dissected the new pot, same thing. Hmm, date code, from 30+ years ago. Next, same thing.... carbon track flaking off the wafer, a symptom of age. First time I tried asking Peavey for help, this is what I get.

To get one dam' amp fixed, I stole a track wafer from another pot of similar construction, had to drill out the center, finnagle it into place, then run wires from all 6 pot connections to the board because fly-lead connectors didn't stick into the board. In the end, the repair got done, customer happy, my time wasted. Let's hope the amp runs forever after this. But at least I learned the thing to do is, don't bother spending $9.50 per, just steal the wafer from another pot & do the surgery. What a long fezzle...... faff session extraordinaire!

[Leo_Gnardo]

I don't do SMD because 1. I can't see it, my senior eyes are too bad

I tell my crustomers that SMD is beyond me: "If I was big as a mouse, with a mouse sized soldering iron, then I'd be able to tackle it." Sort of defuses a bad situation with a little mouse sized humor. Squeeeek! I'm not going to be trapped into doing it, don't care what kind of cheese you offer. with micky ears on. I just can't deal with those Minnie-size components

[J M Fahey]

..

[Leo_Gnardo]

Just out of courtesy, I'd tell Peavey what's going on with those old pots.
I guess they will stop offering them, and you can save other Techs a bad taste in the mouth.
Just sayin'

I can't think of a faster, more certain way of getting on Peavey's permanent "do not help this guy" list. Might need their help in the future. $28.50 lesson learned. At least they shipped at no extra cost. Drat, I was encouraged to do so after reading positive reports here from Enzo and others. Caveat emptor, et non illegitimi carborundum.

[rjb]

I can't think of a faster, more certain way of getting on Peavey's permanent "do not help this guy" list.

Not necessarily, if you're diplomatic about it.*
They probably don't realize the old pots are disintegrating.

* On second thought, ask Juan to tell them.

-rb

[Enzo]

Peavey parts department has better things to do than answer phones all day and look up on lists whether someone ever complained about a bad part before and then sabotage them.

I am sorry you got some bad parts, and I think you definitely should tell them how the parts failed. My experience with PV is that they bend over backwards to help. MY favorite PV support story is the TL604 IC. PV used it a lot, and Texas Instrument stopped making them years ago. Nothing drops in its place. SO Peavey made up little two-IC boards with long legs to take the place of a TL604. You solder the long legs into the old TL604 holes. they could have simply said , "Sorry, the chip is no longer made", but they decided to help people keep their amps running instead.

Please don't "one strike and you are out" at them.

[DrGonz78]

Sadly, I don't actually think that people in general want stuff to last - they want the latest version and technology moves so fast as to quickly render the old one obsolete.

I think it is a culture of technology ADHD. How often do you see people get all jazzed up about some piece of tech gear and then after a while they get bored of it. Then they get all excited about something new thing again and the cycle just continues downward.

Peavey parts department has better things to do than answer phones all day and look up on lists whether someone ever complained about a bad part before and then sabotage them.

I am sorry you got some bad parts, and I think you definitely should tell them how the parts failed. My experience with PV is that they bend over backwards to help. MY favorite PV support story is the TL604 IC. PV used it a lot, and Texas Instrument stopped making them years ago. Nothing drops in its place. SO Peavey made up little two-IC boards with long legs to take the place of a TL604. You solder the long legs into the old TL604 holes. they could have simply said , "Sorry, the chip is no longer made", but they decided to help people keep their amps running instead.

Please don't "one strike and you are out" at them.

My recent experience with Peavey was very good. I had not called to order parts from Peavey since I can usually find other parts that will work and usually just go that route. However, I recently got this TNT150 bass amp where it obviously had fallen on it's face breaking five pots. I looked all over for replacement parts and found only 2 out of the 5 available. I finally made the call to Peavey, gave them the parts number and each one was in stock. They were newer versions of the pots but basically the same things. I ordered all five for $16 with free shipping. I expected to pay shipping and was surprised at the affordable prices of the parts. I was most impressed that there is still an amp manufacturer offering support on an amp that was built in 1988!!

Still I guess it is always a struggle to offer parts for older amps. Perhaps they need to be informed that their stock supplies had defects and complaining is part of the business world. They give me the impression that they want to support their product and help you fix the amp.

[Mick Bailey]

I sometimes see glimmers of good intent when working on amps, where there was clearly thought given to how something could be pulled apart easily, worked on in-situ, or constructed to give a long service life. If we set aside eyelet, tag board or turret construction because these are in the main not mass-produced amps in relative commercial terms, there are some nice touches in some PCB amps that give pause for thought. The Hayden Mo-Fo, for example, has extremely generous solder pads (some of the biggest I've encountered), wide tracks, over-rated components and each capacitor location has dual pads at each end to take three different lead pitches in each location. Some Hartke amps have slots in the edge of the PCB for the power transistors, making them really easy to remove. What I don't see is any amp that is designed exclusively to be easily maintained forever, where every example of best-practice has been incorporated into the design.

Traynor came pretty close - most of their amps didn't even need the chassis to be removed to work on them and the schematic was pasted under the top cover.

My view on modern production is that the ability to repair something isn't part of the ethos. I have a contact in the TV business who tells me with some models there are no spares available at all provided by the manufacturer. These aren't low-end models, but medium to high ticket items. The philosophy is that the model life is so short and the revisions so numerous during the short production life, that it is not economical to manufacture and distribute spares that will quickly become obsolete. There are too many firmware changes that give interoperability and compatibility problems.

I had one of those TVs to take a look at. I located the problem to one IC. It was custom-designed and not available from the manufacturer, or anywhere else. No boards available at all worldwide. That's a £2000 TV. You get a 5-year replacement warranty and that's it. After 5 years if it breaks it's scrap unless you're lucky and there's an open-market component gone, maybe a cap or diode in the SMPS.

[mhuss]

Would a manufacturer go to lengths to design-in unreliability, especially just to last the warranty period?

Now, that would be cynical. I'm not saying precisely that, I'm just saying instead of "let's build (it) as best we possibly can (think RCA in the 1950s)" it's certainly more about "goal: good enough to get away with, without spending too much time or money."

Sadly, I don't actually think that people in general want stuff to last - they want the latest version and technology moves so fast as to quickly render the old one obsolete.

True of all techy things. Phones, tablets, TVs, computers...

[J M Fahey]

I had one of those TVs to take a look at. I located the problem to one IC. It was custom-designed and not available from the manufacturer, or anywhere else.

Problem is that the "manufacturer" isn't actually the MANUFACTURER but in practice, just a reseller.

Very very few might fully design and develop the product, then get some assembly plant in China to make them under US/UK blueprints, nowadays at best they travel to China with a schematic and rough layout in hand, and most just with a product design *idea*: what it should do, how it should be packaged, front panel graphics, not much more than that, and leave to the Chinese Engineers do the rest, decide on key points, **source the materials** which nobody else can do unless living there and being up to date with suppliers and finally assemble the product.

The official "manufacturer" (brand owner)? ... no clue.

A couple friends own the longest standing Buenos Aires shop dedicated to sound boards, interface modules, keyboards, etc, the name says it all: "PC Midi Center" ... since the 80's when all that was Black Magic.

They often travel to China with ideas about some product which might be needed by Musicians (they have ample experience on that), have it made, and sell it both in Argentina and neighbouring Countries (specially huge Brazil).

I finger rib them asking about circuit details , fact is they can't build a Noisy Cricket from a kit.

Product schematics/service/parts ?
They just go to the warehouse and give you a new one if within warranty.

I can safely bet they did not invent this way of doing Business but must be a worldwide trend.

[Mick Bailey]

Problem is that the "manufacturer" isn't actually the MANUFACTURER but in practice, just a reseller.

I had a problem with a pedal (think it was Digitech) a couple of years ago where I discovered the OEM custom IC I needed was actually made (or maybe just supplied?) by TI. TI wouldn't provide any details at all - no spec sheet or anything else, other than to say their supply agreement was one IC per assembled unit, with no spares being produced.

You often see that a generic, usually Chinese, innards turns up under different brands, but is the same thing underneath. 'Badge Engineering' as the motor trade used to call it. Usually low-end stuff - beginner amps, 'your name here' store brands, web-only deals and the like. Sometimes there's a lucky surprise waiting - I have an off-brand TV perceived as being junk, but the insides is Hitachi and pretty decent. Similarly, I have a supermarket own-brand camera that's also Hitachi.

[techineer]

For me, the problem for most repairs is not the difficulty of repair, but the fact that the item is so inexpensive that the cost to replace is not much more that the cost to repair. Guitar Center is distributing a lot of low cost items, and a repair cost between $100-200 is a significant portion of the cost to replace. And a new one will have a warranty of a year or more. Behringer is another example.
And now tube amps coming out of China are selling cheap....

If the customer is willing to pay for a repair, and the cost of a failed SMD circuit board is less than an hour of my time, it's almost an automatic replacement, as it will probably take more than an hour to diagnose to the component level.

The MI industry is going the way of the consumer electronics industry. I have about 5 years before I can retire.... I hope the business holds up that long.

[cjlectronics]

I quit working on keyboards 1/1/2016. The last keyboard I repaired I had to strip everything out to replace a burnt backlight, then after putting it back together, some keys didn't work anymore. To get it back to working order would have taken more money to repair than what the keyboard is worth. Plus it didn't help that the keyboard was discontinued, I ended up giving the keyboard back with a few keys working marginally and didn't charge the guy. I didn't feel like fighting for the $5.00 I would have made. I AM DONE!!

Now, I pick and choose what I work on, when I work on it, and if you don't like the price, go somewhere else. Lately, I've been buying broken equipment, repairing it, and selling it on my website.... http://ww.cjlectronics.com a lot less stress.

[rjb]

'Badge Engineering' as the motor trade used to call it. ...'your name here' store brands... Sometimes there's a lucky surprise waiting.

In the saxophone world, they're called "stencils", because the store brand was usually just that.
Conn, Selmer, Beuscher all produced stencils- often older but perfectly fine "pro" model/designs sold as student instruments.