Sorry, but I do
not repair VCRs, or TVs.
I do charge to pick up and deliver, but it never costs as much as a
plumber charges!
Repair costs & quotations......
I charge a minimum fee of $40 to
inspect the inside of a given article to establish why there is a
fault.
If you engage me to repair something the minimum fee is included in the
total repair bill.
Quotations will not be given for equipment
with a market sale value of less than $200.
But if I think the repair bill will exceed
$100, and I think you may be reluctant to pay a bill that size,
I will telephone or email you about it.
It is not always
possible to provide a fixed price quote before repair work is
undertaken because unforeseen and extra problems have a habit of
appearing while work on equipment is
under way, and there is much variation in the prices or availability of
spare parts.
Searching for parts and service manual information can take time, and
any costs are included in the repair bill.
If I can establish
what is the cause of a problem easily, I usually will give an estimate
which allows a customer
to judge whether it is worth having the article repaired.
Typical most common repair bills can be......
Amplifiers, with one silent channel.
Problem is fused or burnt parts in an average 15 yr old solid state amp
or receiver.
Cost is typically $150 to repair.
Other problems like noisy controls, intermittent or damaged switches
can cost $100.
Precaution!!!
Make sure you
have connected wires to speaker and amplifier terminals correctly and
without any chance of bare wires from red or black terminals ever
touching each other which will cause an amp in the box
to fail.
Turntables not turning.
Find right sized new belt and replace, $40.
Broken MM stylus. Order correct replacement
stylus and fit and test, $80 average.
If unavailable because the replacement part is unavailable, a new
cartridge plus stylus
would be fitted if possible and cost could be $150 for basic Nagoaka
cartridge.
Moving coil cartridges are much more expensive to replace.
Turntable does not start or stop properly, or return arms etc.
Sometimes difficult to fix
because of the availability of parts, usually less than $100.
Cassette Players.
Tape mechanism does not fast forward, rewind, or play a tape, or
tangles up a tape inside the play mechanism..
Sound is noisy and indistinct, and perhaps at the wrong speed.
If all are present, cost for a new set of belts, perhaps replace a
motor, and replace the replay/recording head pick up could be $300 for
an internal "rebuild".
People should try to buy another second hand but working player if the
one they have has developed numerous faults.
Cassette tape, like video tape has become largely extinct, and unless
you have a huge collection of valuable cassettes,
it is not worth spending much on cassette player repairs.
Old cassette players may need replacement drive belts, record/replay
heads, motors, door parts, pinch rollers but repairs seldom cost more
than $150.
Loudspeakers.
The most common problem is disintegrated foam surrounds around the
outside of bass or midrange speaker cones
which are unusually the large "round things" on the front panel of
a speaker when the fabric cover is removed.
I only use replacement butyl
rubber surrounds which will outlast any foam surround. Pairs of stereo
speaker surrounds always
degrade together
and if only one appears to have disintegrated, the other will be close
to failing and I
will only replace pairs of surrounds.
Costs for a pair of 200mm speaker surrounds, $220,
250mm surrounds, $240,
300mm surrounds, $270.
(More about speakers below...)
Radios.
I get about 6 AM tube radios per year to fix.
Usually they are a much loved ancient reminder of the past era when
life was simple, and you could buy a lot for $2.
People tend to think their 1955 radio might cost $20 to fix, because
that's all they paid on the last service bill in 1966.
Unfortunately, a typical labour time for a silent AM radio with 49
faults will be about 2 days full time to fix properly and
will usually include some modifications to the
circuit to make it work because some parts or tube types
are no longer available,
and because the designers in 1950 ensured that the performance included
noise and minor problems which would be unacceptable in 2009.
I stock spares of most minor parts and all radio vacuum
tubes. Usually many minor parts need replacement such as
capacitors and there will be considerable re-wiring needed. Today's use
of compact fluoresent lamps create large amounts of radio frequency
interference noise that sounds like loud hums as you tune along the
band and often right on your favourite AM radio station. To overcome
this problem many old radios need to have a ferrite rod antenna fitted
which picks up the wanted station but without the interference noise.
Two day's work
means 16 hours, and if I was a
plumber or cheap mechanic, that would bring me $1,120 at $70 per hour.
Who wants to pay
that much to fix an old AM radio, usually so they can
listen to ABC Radio National which is the only station worth listening
to?
I've never known anyone offering the "plumber's fee" for the work, so
don't complain when I charge
only $300, including replacement parts
and a new antenna. In many radios I have to replace the mains cable
because the existing cable is downright deadly, and its a wonder half
the family has not been electrocuted.
FM radios are mainly all solid state
and don't suffer from interferences and cannot be re-wired. But most of
the
circuit chips are
available for anything made since 1975. FM reception is often the most
reliable sound source, but occasionally I get a lemon that resists all
attempts to make it work properly, and they can be difficult to
diagnose because of the circuit complexity.
Warranty.
All repairs are warranted for 3mths at least.
But suppose I'd
just repaired dad's favorite 1980 amplifier and speakers.
Suppose dad allows an end of school year party where the fine young
people present try to find out how just how loud dad's
old hi-fi system can go with full bass boost.
After 20 minutes some smoke pours out of the speakers and amplifier,
and there's a nasty smell, and the sound of crackles,
then dead silence. And suppose I'd repaired the amp 2 weeks previously.
I would not fix the system a second time for free!
And if I fix
something and the fix does not last 3mths, and it is not an owner's
fault that the item has failed,
and the item cannot be fixed, then I refund the repair cost.
Unfortunately, a small % of items fall into the category of having a
fault such as some intermittent
noise or sound failure whose cause cannot be traced economically.
I am very
reluctant to try to fix CD players for which there is no support such
as easily available parts,
so if you spent $70 at Bing Lee on a CD or multi disc player made in
China, I won't touch it. Buy another new one.
After amplifiers and receivers, CD players are the second most unreliable audio component.
Modern electronic
items are now always extremely complex, and many items from the 1960s
to about 1985 are much easier to repair than more recently made
equipment.
Time for repairs.
Most solid state
repairs can be done within 10 working days, but sometimes the time can
stretch out to a month
because a workshop manual has to be obtained, and perhaps several
orders for parts placed as faults are discovered and fixed.
And some parts suppliers are hopeless to deal with and very slow to
answer inquiries on parts availability.
Tube amp
repairs can take longer.
I have often got a
back log of projects where I am making new amplifiers which takes an
enormous number of labour hours.
So I have to interrupt the crafting part of my business to carry out a
repair, so some delays can be expected.
I know our
Government politicians lament the shortage of skilled people in
Australia.
But I lament that
nobody offers me the wages of politicians, and not even wages of a
plumber, and somehow they get this idea that home base businesses
are some kind of glorified hobby where the skilled electronics
tradesman happily works for 1978 wage rates.
There would be more skilled
people to perform all the fixes if the wages attracted more
people to the job.
So please be be
*very* patient, I know I earn far less
than you!
RESTORATIONS and RE-ENGINEERING IS MORE THAN JUST REPAIRING.
Usually there is a
far longer time scale for restoration simply because I have to have a
queue system for larger projects which is the only fair way
to arrange the work flow. Over the last 6 years I have always felt I
have too much to get through in each week.
I have asked God for 100 more hours a week. God is extremely "time
challenged", and he has not answered my godmails....
This means that
with an given amplifier or pair speakers, there may be a need to
replace parts which
may threaten the the future reliability of the item, so the repair has
to include preventative work to ensure a happy future.
So when I repair an old
1960 tube amp, I don't just repair it by replacing one little
part and I may have to rewire the whole
amp to get the
performance of the unit to meet 2008 expectations of performance and
reliability.
The repair job then becomes one of re-engineering since it may require
me to re-design the circuit.
I am well skilled at
designing amps and radios to give excellent performance but it does
take a lot of time.
I will always also
try to fit modern safe mains wiring and a fuse so that your ancient
equipment won't give you a shock,
electrocute your cat or burn down
your house. Much equipment comes to me in terribly unsafe condition.
Radiograms needing re-furbishment of their cabinets can be expensive but I know tradesmen here that can do nice french polishing.
Old radios, and
radiograms are a small part of my work, but much care is taken to
ensure such old items benefit from restoration for future generations
to enjoy.
I often take a
long time to get around to fixing a radio brought to me because there
is always a backlog of better paying work I have to do so the bills get
paid.
I have clients who
bring me ancient old amplifiers which are in a very poor
condition. Sometimes they are "collectors' items"
which are supposed to have some kind of value. One recent case is where
a guy brings me a pair of Quad-II amps and its control unit and a tube
AM and
FM tuner all made in about 1955, so four separate components and the
tubes are all smashed, missing, or worn out and need replacing and all
the internal small parts such as resistors, capacitors all have reached
their end-of-life so a full re-wire is required with modifications to
make the
items perform well for the next 50 years. But something like this may
take me 3 weeks to finally get right and cost $1,500, or 1.5 times
average weekly earnings in Australia at present. The original cost in
1955 may have been 15 weeks pay because Quad equipment was an expensive
brand that was purchased mainly by doctors, lawyers, rich graziers, and
anyone else who got high wages while most people struggled to buy
something awful from Pye, AWA, Kreisler etc.
But when I have finished, the Quad system will be able to be used with
normal modern speakers and have better sound
than available in 1955.
The terminals will suit modern cabling, and safety is much improved,
and the system will be reliable, and have active protection against
output tube failure
and thus meet modern
expectations of performance.
Hence some ancient Leak, Quad, or Dynaco amps etc are able to be fully stripped down and rebuilt to a new circuit using all modern minor parts such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, potentiometers, switches, wiring, contacts, sockets and cables and replacing all the vacuum tubes if needed.
Generally, if the
basic items like output transformers and power transformers are in good
condition then these can all be retained or mounted on new chassis,
and a unique amp is thus created.
For those
technically minded interested in images and schematics of work I have
done on old amps, see the pages on
re-engineering.
And some designs
like those used on old Leak amps are not worth
copying, since Leak quality was so poor and the Hammond solution
would be very favorable or else use something from my stocks. But if
there isn't
room to fit an off the shelf replacement item, then a custom wound new
transformer may be the
only answer.
If I wind custom output transformers, or import replacements from
Sowter or Lundahll, the quality of the amp and the sound will then
equal the
highest available, for after all, even the best quality and most
expensive high end tube gear is simply some tubes combined with a nice
OPT, and other parts, and it is possible to re-engineer an old amp up
to the same standard.
I plot graphs for
the speakers response at 4 different microphone positions and
average the levels expressed in voltage dB to gain what is a fairly
good indicator of the actual acoustic output from a speaker in the
normal listening position sitting in a chair at 3.5 metres from the
speakers. I have a slightly better than average listening room and if I
get any speaker to measure as well at my room it will sound excellent
in anyone else's living room.
The 4 mic positions are usually at 3.5M +/- 0.5M from a speaker and
nearly on axis and between 0.7M and 1.2M above floor level.
The response will vary with each of the 4 mic positions because even
with a randomly varying 'pink noise' test signal with varying frequency
and phase shift and level there is still some
effect from room resonances and reflections. Resonances in all domestic
rooms will prevent making accurate graphs of responses using pure sine
wave tones of constant level, phase
and frequency. Such tones rarely occur in music. The bass will be tight
foundation for the music as the speakers allow,
and treble will have the right amount of presence and not too bright or
harsh and not too little and dull.
In layman's terms,
pink noise is a test signal that when played through speakers
moderately loudly sounds just like standing beside a nice big
waterfall.
Sound energy in
this signal contains all audio frequencies changing randomly in terms
or level and phase and frequency between
20Hz and 20kHz.