Service-friendly and service-unfriendly brands

[glebert]

I think it really depends. I had terrible experience trying to get support from Ampeg, this was before the Yamaha acquisition.

[Leo_Gnardo]

I had terrible experience trying to get support from Ampeg, this was before the Yamaha acquisition.

.
With Ampeg, it sorta ran hot & cold for me. Late 90's I asked for an SVT-CL schematic. They sent me a big manila envelope crammed with big blueprints. Very hard to follow as multipin connectors ran off one page and picked up on another. What a mess. BUT they didn't charge me anything. Couple years later, I needed some odds & ends, also SVT speakers. By this time AMPEG was part of LOUD. At the other end of the phone line was a perky and competent woman who saw to it my orders were filled, billed, packed & sent without delay. I didn't have to deal with LOUD much after that, but I can imagine the service/parts end must have suffered as LOUD let their Ampeg and Crate branches wither & die. Now Ampeg is owned by Yamaha, and I haven't had to ask for anything. Yet. We'll see how it goes, if I need to go there. But I can say I miss the good old days when Steve "Doc" Dachraden, Ted Kornblum and Debra Kovacs took excellent care of the customers and artists using their gear.

[Enzo]

AMpeg used to be AMpeg. Then it was Japanese, then it was Sint Louis Music, then it was LOUD, and now Yamaha. And each time, the new owners got the documentation stash in a box and piles of parts. The new owners usually had little clue what they had. When Loud took over I had a better idea about schematics than they did. They would tell someone they had no schematic for model XYZ, but I knew that was included on the model ZYX drawings. SO I would write LOUD and tell them. They had no working familiarity. Yamaha tries hard, but I wouldn't expect a lot regarding the previous models.

[g1]

I don't think this thread needs to be about whether we agree or disagree with the OP's picks or not.
As long as we give reasons for pro or con, I appreciate seeing other peoples experiences dealing with various brands.

TC Electronics is one I will not look at. Zero support and expensive repair service if you send to them.

[Axtman]

Yes g1! You can agree with me or not. I too am curious about other people experiences.

I had a chance to buy an Orange amplifier pretty cheap but did research and found that schematics were not available. So I passed. I'll put them in the unfriendly category.

Fender is great. I love the fact that most parts are available as either original or aftermarket. I've never met a Fender that I could not fix. (Knock on wood). Even their real cheap modern entry level stuff.

BTW, it looks like some Musicman transformers are available from Mercury Magnetics, but they are not cheap! https://www.mercurymagnetics.com/make/musicman/

[The Dude]

Sorry Axtman, pretty much a "swing and a whiff" on this post.

Respectfully, you can agree or disagree with the OP, but I don't think we need to get snarky.

[olddawg]

I had a chance to buy an Orange amplifier pretty cheap but did research and found that schematics were not available. So I passed. I'll put them in the unfriendly category.

Fender is great. I love the fact that most parts are available as either original or aftermarket. I've never met a Fender that I could not fix. (Knock on wood). Even their real cheap modern entry level stuff.

Most Oranges aren’t that complex and repairable using basic troubleshooting skills. Fender (or anything else).. if you have trouble with a DSP circuit.. good luck. Imhe.

[g1]

Like a lot of brands, new vs old can be a major factor. Not sure if Orange is like this, but perhaps. I would never turn down an old marshall. A lot of their newer stuff however, I would not accept. I've heard plenty of people say this about the mode 4 marshall stuff.
Mesa Boogie is another one many will not service. Others say they make a lot of money off them.
Line 6 is one I won't repair. I don't like the 'computer' philosophy of service (board swaps). Other DSP stuff is probably similar.

A lot of the lack of serviceability is due to meeting a price point. Ease of assembly is where the money is made. That means a lot of stuff is cheaper to write off (warranty) than to design it to be repairable.
With older gear, it's usually more about parts availability than physical repairability. Many solid state parts have become more hard to find than tube.

[nosaj]

Like a lot of brands, new vs old can be a major factor. Not sure if Orange is like this, but perhaps. I would never turn down an old marshall. A lot of their newer stuff however, I would not accept. I've heard plenty of people say this about the mode 4 marshall stuff.
Mesa Boogie is another one many will not service. Others say they make a lot of money off them.
Line 6 is one I won't repair. I don't like the 'computer' philosophy of service (board swaps). Other DSP stuff is probably similar.

A lot of the lack of serviceability is due to meeting a price point. Ease of assembly is where the money is made. That means a lot of stuff is cheaper to write off (warranty) than to design it to be repairable.
With older gear, it's usually more about parts availability than physical repairability. Many solid state parts have become more hard to find than tube.

And to top it off the 3 MODE 4 I repaired were not really a big deal if you looked at past threads. Now to gain that experience right off the top yourself may well be another story. But success seemed to be about shorting out the capacitors before reconnecting it all to avoid shorting out the outputs.

nosaj

[Enzo]

God damned things...