If you were a tech...

[Quencho092]

how much would you charge to replace two resistors in a 73 SF bassman. Resistors sell for cents, and it's only 4 solder tacks.

I would honestly charge 15-20 bucks at extreme MOST, that would take me a good 20-30 minutes maximum to do, mostly heating up my iron and taking apart the chassis. Guess how much a local tech wanted to charge a friend of mine....



100 FRIGGIN BUCKS!!! And when he quoted him the price, he said that it was only one burnt resistor. My friend answered back saying that there were two burnt resistors, then the tech said "oh no wonder it's broken, he opened up the chassis!". He wasn't even competent enough to spot the 2nd burnt resistor next to the pilot light.

I pulled the chassis during one of our practices because one of the tubes were getting scalding hot and the other was off. I immediately noticed that the big resistor over the tube socket was fried, and I traced a wire back to the power transformer and found that another resistor was fried. We checked up the schematics for the amp and got the resistor values, then checked mouser and found the prices-it would total less than 50 cents.

I could have done the job, but he wanted a tech to do it. I was fine with that as long as he wouldn't get ripped off royally. This makes me fuming mad, since now there's only one good tech left in my area and he specializes in VCR repairs.

 

[kmcguitars]

Re: If you were a tech...

A good amp Tech is worth his weight in gold. Their services are
Invauleble. I would guess there is a reason those resistors blew
and simply replaceing them may not solve the problem. So this is
why you must pay the piper. I never had a amp seviced for under
$100. This is NOT outragous. I've payed this much just to have
a trim pot installed and my tubes Bias. A $50 bench charge is
customery, X amout labor rate + parts (At a slight markup :13: )
Bottom line is fixing Tube amps is a specialty field ,And most
Amp techs are more honest then your average auto Mechanic
who will RAPE you for all your worth.
BTW, I don't know if I'd bring a vintage Tube amp to a guy who
fixes VCR's for a living? Maybe if he was a Musician/player? IMHO.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: If you were a tech...

You're completely right about the price of resistors. Even ones with a low tolerance level are priced very cheap.

Bear in mind, the cost not only covers the resistors, but the knowledge that he has accumulated to find out where the problem was and fix it so that your friend's amp would work right again.

With all of that said, the price is still way too high. It was a $20-30 job at most, definitely not anywhere close to $100.

 

[Benji2204]

Re: If you were a tech...

A good amp Tech is worth his weight in gold. Their services are
Invauleble. I would guess there is a reason those resistors blew
and simply replaceing them may not solve the problem. So this is
why you must pay the piper. I never had a amp seviced for under
$100. This is NOT outragous. I've payed this much just to have
a trim pot installed and my tubes Bias. A $50 bench charge is
customery, X amout labor rate + parts (At a slight markup :13: )
Bottom line is fixing Tube amps is a specialty field ,And most
Amp techs are more honest then your average auto Mechanic
who will RAPE you for all your worth.

Amp techs services *are* invaluable, however if the tech didn't even
notice the 2nd fried resistor, I doubt he'd take the time to find what was frying them.

As for bench fees... $100 sounds pretty steep to me. I think KMCGuitars quote of $50 as customary sounds about right... My tech charges $40 and does decent work.

I really don't think it can be said that most amp techs are more honest than your average mechanic... I've had amp techs pocket power tubes (No, I didn't say you could keep the GE 6550s when you put in new EL34s :smack: ), not do work I asked them to do (replace jacks, tighten ohm selector, etc), and overcharge me for parts (not talking slight markup here).

There are honest and dishonest people in all trades. Unfortunately sleazy mechanics and amp techs share a similar trait... They both take advantage of the fact that their average customer has little in-depth knowledge of their car/amp and exploit that advantage for maximum profit.​

 

[Quencho092]

Re: If you were a tech...

that's what really makes me sick about it though.

I mean, i know a bit about amps and circuitry, am familiar with pretty much every fender circuit layout, and am handy with a soldering iron, but i just dont have any hands on experience besides installing a new output transformer and wiring a few guitars.

Oh and the TV Video repair guy, he's the tech for a few bands in my area and he fixed my dad's 80's lexicon reflex reverb unit for a fair price, and it sounds great again.

What i really dislike about the techs I've dealt with is that they presume the customer knows nothing about what is being fixed, and that they can charge whatever they want, because after all, if they can't get it fixed, you might as well use it as a boat anchor! That's actually a line from the ripoff tech himself.

The resistor next to the pilot light was 100 ohms, and being connected to the power transformer, its failure must have resulted from excessive amounts of current. So the problem was either 1)There was some sort of power surge, or 2)Something is up with the power transformer. If it doesn't work after replacing both resistors, i could replace the power caps (they were the originals from '73 according to the date codes.)

But at least I have an idea of what needs to be done, it's not rocket science, it's just tracing a schematic to figure out where the excess current came from that caused the damage. I'm not going to shell out 100 bucks to some ****.y tech who didn't even take the time to look over the whole chassis.

 

[Jeff Seal]

Re: If you were a tech...

I would very highly suggest you rethink this....
There is way more to this than you realize!

no offense meant...

there are real "techs' , and there are "techs" who just replace what's burnt...

If you want to know why I charge $85 for repairing a tube amp, get your DMM and the Bassman in question and I'll show you why!

Jeff Seal

 

[Artie]

Re: If you were a tech...

15 years ago, I would have charged at least $50 for that same repair - and I consider myself an honest and competent tech. There's just more here than meets the eye. The main thing is, the "bench" charge. You need to understand, as soon as you bring something into the service department, you're about to chip in on my rent, electric bill, equipment cost, and you're going to pay for that form I fill out when you dropped it off, and the ink in my pen. It can't be any other way, or I'll go out of business.

Small electronic parts have what seems like an outrageous markup because we keep so many in stock. The money tied up in those parts could be sitting in a high-yield mutual fund. I've got to make the money back that I've "invested" in parts, so that you don't have to wait 2-weeks for a resitor or transistor.

There's another part too - thanks to the litigation attourneys. I can't give you back your amp with a known safety problem. So now, I'm going to do a high-pot test on it to check for stray voltages on the chassis. You're going to pay for that time and equipment too.

In some ways, its unfortunate, but in others, you do want good techs around, and you want them to be happy.

Artie

Edit: One more important thing . . . it doesn't matter if you bring in an item, and tell me - "it's only a burnt resistor." I still have to do an evaluation of the item and provide you an estimate. Part of that is the law, and part of it is to protect me. What if the resistor burnt due to a bad transistor. I don't want to give you back the amp and just have it fry another.

 

[JacksonMIA]

Re: If you were a tech...

I would be kind of leary of a tech that just glanced over the chassis and said, "oh, it's just a fried resistor" and acted like that's all that was wrong - no matter how much he charged. Before I let him work on it, I'd pack it up and ship it to Jeff or Artie or maybe a few others halfway across the country, pay the extra shipping charge, and pay possibly higher tech fees. In this case, I'd be like you and want to fix it myself instead of giving it to that tech.

But a tech you know is competent, $100 probably isn't all that bad.

 

[ErikH]

Re: If you were a tech...

15 years ago, I would have charged at least $50 for that same repair - and I consider myself an honest and competent tech. There's just more here than meets the eye. The main thing is, the "bench" charge. You need to understand, as soon as you bring something into the service department, you're about to chip in on my rent, electric bill, equipment cost, and you're going to pay for that form I fill out when you dropped it off, and the ink in my pen. It can't be any other way, or I'll go out of business.

Small electronic parts have what seems like an outrageous markup because we keep so many in stock. The money tied up in those parts could be sitting in a high-yield mutual fund. I've got to make the money back that I've "invested" in parts, so that you don't have to wait 2-weeks for a resitor or transistor.

There's another part too - thanks to the litigation attourneys. I can't give you back your amp with a known safety problem. So now, I'm going to do a high-pot test on it to check for stray voltages on the chassis. You're going to pay for that time and equipment too.

In some ways, its unfortunate, but in others, you do want good techs around, and you want them to be happy.

Artie

Edit: One more important thing . . . it doesn't matter if you bring in an item, and tell me - "it's only a burnt resistor." I still have to do an evaluation of the item and provide you an estimate. Part of that is the law, and part of it is to protect me. What if the resistor burnt due to a bad transistor. I don't want to give you back the amp and just have it fry another.

You're my kinda tech. Too bad I'm in TX and you're in Florida.

I did find a good tech here though. I think he's the only one in the entire area. He serviced my Marshall and was very honest with me on everything about it. He even let me hang and watch him do the work (adjusting the bias) and he showed me a few other things too. Nice guy and great work. It cost me $150.00 (had to pay for the tubes too) but it was worth every penny.

What's more cost effective, $100 to fix his amp or $1100 for a new one?

 

[Bludave]

Re: If you were a tech...

A good amp Tech is worth his weight in gold. Their services are
Invauleble. I would guess there is a reason those resistors blew
and simply replaceing them may not solve the problem. So this is
why you must pay the piper. I never had a amp seviced for under
$100. This is NOT outragous. I've payed this much just to have
a trim pot installed and my tubes Bias. A $50 bench charge is
customery, X amout labor rate + parts (At a slight markup :13: )
Bottom line is fixing Tube amps is a specialty field ,And most
Amp techs are more honest then your average auto Mechanic
who will RAPE you for all your worth.
BTW, I don't know if I'd bring a vintage Tube amp to a guy who
fixes VCR's for a living? Maybe if he was a Musician/player? IMHO.

Yeah... What he said. My Amp Tech has a 75$ bench charge. + parts tubes etc. $100.00 sounds fair to me.

 

[Quencho092]

Re: If you were a tech...

yeah, maybe im in over my head, and kinda pissed because he BOUGHT the amp broken from this guy who's a buddy of the amp tech. We tested the amp out at the guys house when we bought it, and it sounded fine except for real early distortion. When we took it home and jammed with it, it was obvious that there was something wrong.

He called the guy he bought it from and he told him to just take it to charlie at the shop and he'll cover it. When he took it to the shop he got slammed with the 100 dollar quote and backed out.

 

[Quencho092]

Re: If you were a tech...

You're my kinda tech. Too bad I'm in TX and you're in Florida.

I did find a good tech here though. I think he's the only one in the entire area. He serviced my Marshall and was very honest with me on everything about it. He even let me hang and watch him do the work (adjusting the bias) and he showed me a few other things too. Nice guy and great work. It cost me $150.00 (had to pay for the tubes too) but it was worth every penny.

What's more cost effective, $100 to fix his amp or $1100 for a new one?

He got it for 400. And the tech kept the tubes....

 

[kmcguitars]

Re: If you were a tech...

Yeah... What he said. My Amp Tech has a 75$ bench charge. + parts tubes etc. $100.00 sounds fair to me.

WOW ! Is that what Richie's getting these day?(I assume you go to N.Y.M.R)
It's been about 15 years since I had my amp serviced. But again I don't
Mind paying a premium price for a Premium service that he provides. Over
the years I've picks his brain so much I can do most of my own repairs.
But It's good to know he's around in case I get myself into Deep S**T!
He's already warned me next time I bring him a amp... He's going to
charge me double! :laugh2:

 

[bluey@sunni]

Re: If you were a tech...

You really have to be careful about Tech's as some are good and some take you to the cleaners.
My amp's are done by Dale Sherlock, www.sherlockamps.com, he is the guru in Melbourne Australia and the same goes for Phil at Syndal Music. You get what you pay for and if your not happy create a scene! Nothing will get a attention more than a blue fisted top of your screaming match. The Cops, when called, will be on your side.

P.S. I work as a hydraulic fitter and when something goes "pear shaped" it normally has legal follow up ie.I get sacked and/or the coronerial inquest begins.
P.P.S. Had some joker try to charge me $20 to assemble a SS Oil line, I didn't tell him what I do but with a slight hangover I did what is a fairly complex procedure without problem in front of him.
Enough said.