$426.50 for biasing new power tubes, replacing a preamp tube, and straightening out the transformer

[johnny q]

I would say that price is roughly double what it should be at the very least. What I have found over the past few years or so, these guys that repair amps and instruments have adopted a sense of entitlement and think it is ok to charge exorbitant prices and act like they are doing you a favor. This dynamic in my area of the country is exacerbated by the fact that the generation prior to these guys, have either died or retired and they know damn well choices are slim for us.

I am not going to mention names, but someone locally charged me almost 300 dollars to tell me nothing was wrong with my amp except "some contacts needed attention." Because I am smarter than the average bear, that simply means 300 dollars for a spritz of DeOxit.

Time to start learning how to do this stuff myself.

 

[TotallyRadGuitars]

It does seem like the situation is getting dire in some places for maintaining these amps. I guess something we have to get used to as the tech gets even older and the people who know how to work on them well get older/retire/etc

Just in my relatively short amount of time owning tube amps I've seen a huge decline in the quality of work. I had my Marshall TSL, which is generally considered to be one of the hardest to work on with the multiple PCB's and ribbon cables, fixed up after a pretty bad failure at a local shop, it was $162 in 2013 and it still works today from that original repair. She did fantastic work and the inside looks like it came right from the Marshall factory. That shop closed and I still think about it a lot and wish it were still around. (just to compare apples to apples, $162 in 2013 would be roughly $214 today in 2024)

In contrast, the last two years, I had a Hiwatt repaired locally and it was $325 for one filter cap and one resistor on the power pcb. They never communicated with me at all, so now I have 3 old 80s caps and 1 newer cap in there which kind of irks me. The resistor they used is definitely some random crap leftover part that came out of something else, it is way too big for the spot it is in and clearly old. The amp works so I can't complain too much but for that price I expected better work.

Then I had that Rev F Dual Rec at a local place that charged me $90 just to look at it, they didn't communicate with me, I called multiple times and was told it was still in line and hadn't been looked at, then they were on vacation for a week etc, and they couldn't figure it out anyway. Ultimately it went back to Mesa which I expected to be some kind of insane bill but it was actually really reasonable especially considering the extent of the repair (PCB burned through in one spot, pretty bad).

Long story short, I can't tackle every repair but as the quality of local repair places is getting closer and closer to "advanced hobbyist" levels instead of professionals, I'll just do it myself and save the money. It's also why I'm so appreciative of the techs that really know their shit when they chime in on the Tech Corner of this forum (and others), it must be frustrating for them to see so many botched repairs.

 

[GuitarGuy08]

That's why I do it myself. Buy a bias probe and be self-sufficient.

It saved me way more time learning to do it by myself rather than running it to some shop and getting it later. The shops seem not to really care about the gear either, at least in my area. Could take a month and all they did was swap a tube or two. Pass.

 

[Gitfiddler]

I have had 3 tube amp “techs” not fix the issues I hired them to fix. One created more problems. I love tube amps, but digital modeling is for me these days.

 

[skoora]

I swear we seem to have a whole new wave of Repair folks who are really just advanced hobbyists, who watched a lot of YouTube and think they’re qualified. But they don’t really know enough to effectively troubleshoot some of these more complicated amps. Also, they don’t have the humility or ethics to really look into something before making expensive decisions.
No one who calls themselves a professional should do any major work after diagnosis, without getting your OK first.

 

[GuitarGuy08]

Had a tech tell me he did not have the time to trace out the issue in my amp - said it would cost me too much so he did not do it. I thought that was kinda cool, although I really wanted the amp repaired. Spent some time staring at the board after finding a similar diagram and found it no problem. Did it take me half an hour or more of looking at each jump on the board? Yes. Did I find the mistake and repair it with a bit of solder? Also, yes. Techs are useful if you really need them, but if your diagrams are available online, you are almost better off doing it all yourself these days. You'll be on the same level as most 'professionals' nowadays, as mentioned above.