Sketchy behavior from amp techs that blew my mind

[Sailindawg]

@corliss1

And you said your shop is where?......

You sound like a great amp tech & an extremely wonderful human being!

 

[corliss1]

And look, I'm not saying I'm the end-all be-all of amp techdom, because I'm not even close. I'm never going to be either. But at least have some care and respect, both for the instrument and the customer.

 

[corliss1]

And you said your shop is where?......

I'm not here to advertise (that's actually against forum rules unless you have a commercial acocunt) but based on the city in my profile I'm easily findable.

 

[Sailindawg]

No worries, I was being hyperbolic with that statement more than anything else.

I liked your honesty & you seem very knowledgeable. The entire pcb vs hardwired turret or eye board construction is tired. It takes a different set of skills to work on a pcb board. Pcb's make traces more easily reproduced across manufactured amps that results in more consistentcy in manufacturing.

 

[rschiller]

I frequently have interactions with customers where there isn't anything actually wrong with their amp, but they've read that X can make something better or Y is a magic component or they've been told Z is designed to fail. Instead of doing any work, these appointments turn into therapy or philosophy sessions where I talk them back from the ledge of assured amp destruction. However, the one I had yesterday was about a Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue and it really kinda blew my mind.

Customer calls semi-local tech A. A tells him he won't work on anything with a circuit board, including the Fender reissue series. That's...a choice...but whatever. (tell me you only want to work on the easiest stuff of all time without telling me...)

Customer calls semi-local tech B. B tells him they wooooould look at it, but these amps have "bad parts" and it "might not be worth it" to fix the unit.

Keep in mind this is for a relatively recent '65 PRRI. A limited version in a knotty pine cab, too.

Customer calls me. I say bring it over. The amp sounds great but the trem is weak and has a tick. I twiddle the bias pot for a few seconds to find the trem sweet spot, the trem gets deeper, the tick goes away, the customer is amazed I never even had to open the amp.

That was it - that was the entire problem. I also explained that with the almost non-existent idle noise and killer tone we were getting that the tubes are in excellent shape, so there's no reason to swap those either. I also explained they've been making the reissue line for 33 years now and there aren't some secret parts that are designed to fail - what could we possibly change in there to improve the tone you've already said you love? He was amazed I didn't try and sell him anything.

Is this really where a lot of "techs" are at now? It seems completely insane to me that a tech wouldn't want to see a Fender reissue. If vintage Fender is "Amp 101" the reissue line has got to be "Amp 102" as they've made more of those than they ever did the originals so any normal repair shop should be seeing them all.the.time. Not because they have issues, but because there are so many of them. I just couldn't understand why a new, clean, non-butchered Princeton Reverb was an automatic "no" from two shops.

<----------discuss---------->

Lower end IC Brand filter caps likely Fender uses will go bad sooner and some may think they don’t sound quite as good when they’re new as old-schoo Spragues, F&T or Kendrick. But if the Amp doesn’t have 120 cycle hum Then they’re probably just fine and working

 

[corliss1]

If anything, PCB amps should (and can be done) better in every way than hand wired, but manufacturers often cheap out on the board. There are definitely PCB amps that are amazing - the Fender hand wired reissue series, modern Matamp, high end brands like Driftwood, so it can be done.

@rschiller - IC caps are fine, and one of the largest brands on the planet. Fender did seem to have a period where there were issues with them, but it was likely this, which affected everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague. There's *lots* of completely beat to death reissue series amps that have never had a service doing just fine out there But just seeing the IC logo alone isn't enough reason to rip them out, especially on a recent unit.

 

[Blue Bill]

Since this thread points out the risks and drawbacks of amp tech-ery, I'm happy to report that I finally found an excellent tech, here in Maine. The music store in Portland, called Buckdancer's Choice, has a man named Tim that does great work. I couldn't, for years, find anyone I trusted, so I had six or seven amps with various problems I couldn't figure out. He has fixed every one of them; quickly and for a fair price, with no drama. They all sound great; what a pleasure. Highly recommended.

 

[Blrfl]

If i was a pro, it would be tough for me to offer the same bench charge for an amp that I know will be straightforward to work on (the Fender eyelet boards) vs the modern circuit board (who knows what you may get).

Sure, and I can reliably predict how long it will take to do what I do professionally thanks to decades gathering experience in doing it. I'd faceplant hard if asked to come up with a prediction for, say, forging a horseshoe from bar stock because I've never done that and have no comparable experience to inform it.

The documentation for the '65 Twin Reverb and the reissue version both show the expected signals at a few dozen points in the circuit. With that in hand and general knowledge of electronics, the amount of time it should take to run through all of those and narrow the failure down to part of the circuit should be no less predictable for the reissue than on the '65. A pro will either get the service manual and get to work or turn the work down entirely.

 

[sds1]

Next level of disdain in tube amp world beyond PCB thru hole is PCB surface mount. Super easy to work on once you have addressed the required skills and equipment (neither too big of a deal)-- enables even tighter layouts and all the parts are (obviously) conveniently mounted on the surface! But a lot of tube amp guys see SMD and think it's alien tech from another dimension, flat-out refusing to work on it. I don't get the attitude of turning business way if this is how you put food on the table.

 

[jrblue]

I don't think judging the "no circuit board" guy out of context is fair or even warranted. Maybe he's a specialist. Maybe he's busy enough with the wired stuff. I don't know or care, but it's his business and his reasons and I would speak to him before passing judgment.

The second guy's point about not spending much on an amp with limited value is something we hear all the time because it's often true, particularly given labor costs. I wasn't there to see if this information was offered as something the customer might consider (rather than getting a big repair bill) or what, but I have heard the same question in all kinds of contexts where it was helpful to hear. Example: "I can put a new alternator in your beater Austin-Healey, or you can get a rebuilt one and do it yourself, easily and save a lot of money." My response was not "are you calling me poor?" or "are you disrespecting my much-loved car?" It was "thank you." Yeah, we all wish every repair person for everything we own that breaks had perfect social-interaction skills but the industry standard is that many do a poor job with the actual work, let alone conducting themselves like the concierge at the Biltmore. Most are struggling to make ends meet. Hopefully, if the OP is as described, then great success will follow because the standard for amp techs has become so poor that a good one who communicates well and has good values is the exception, not the rule, and worthy of both our praise and our dollars.

 

[corliss1]

@jrblue - oh for sure, he can do what he wants. I don't know the guy personally at all.

For the second guy, this was a Fender Princeton Reverb we're talking about, not some cheap amp. To even hint that it might be cost prohibitive to try and fix is completely crazy, especially when they haven't even seen the amp in person.

 

[Blrfl]

But just seeing the IC logo alone isn't enough reason to rip them out, especially on a recent unit.

The key here is measurement and reasoning and not replacing parts "just because." I think it would be reasonable to replace all of the electrolytic caps in a chassis if one failed and the amp is of the right vintage to have been hit by the plague. It's cheap insurance against a repeat trip to the bench.

But a lot of tube amp guys see SMD and think it's alien tech from another dimension, flat-out refusing to work on it. I don't get the attitude of turning business way if this is how you put food on the table.

I'm a card-carrying computer scientist and software engineer who's been practicing for more than four decades. Just as humans evolved from single-celled, all-in-one organisms to collections of specialized cells doing different things, those in my field have had to do the same thing because the amount of material has exploded, to put it mildly. I'd be a hypocrite to deny that there isn't stuff that's alien to me. There's plenty of work I'll turn down because, despite having the chops to learn it, I lack the time and mental cycles. But I'll still be able to keep food on the table.

The attitude I don't like is "I don't understand it, therefore it's crap," which is different than "I've given it a thorough evaluation and, in my professional opinion, it's crap for reasons X, Y and Z."

(Sorry, long posts today... Took off from work and have the urge to write... errr... be a blowhard.)

 

[Huddy]

I had a fantastic experience with the tech who was recommended to me by my luthier. I took in my '96 Marshall JTM60 combo for repair in 2018. This is the amp everyone says "cheap, won't last, will overheat and die" and I had gotten twenty-three years on it at that point when it went "HUMMMMMM.. click, silence." It is a PCB amp with tube sockets mounted on a board horizontally. I checked the tubes and found a blistered EL-34 and dropped the chassis and saw nothing.

The tech took in the amp, took a $40 bench fee, and told me he'd let me know if the repairs were going to amount to more than half the value of the amp. A week later he called me. He found that the overheating tube had caused a current limiting resistor to fail and that fried an internal fuse. New power tubes, resistor, and fuse, and a bias job, ran $124.50 and the bench fee was subtracted from that.

It has been fine ever since.

Bob

This was my first tube amp. I did not understand the concept of standby. I left the amp on for DAAAAAAAAYS. Never had an issue.

I've bought 2 broken ones to repair and sell. Both instances were failed quick connects on the output transformer.

Yours looks exceptionally clean. I left my with a college friend for the summer but didn't re-enroll, lost my phone never saw it again.

 

[Swingcat]

I frequently have interactions with customers where there isn't anything actually wrong with their amp, but they've read that X can make something better or Y is a magic component or they've been told Z is designed to fail. Instead of doing any work, these appointments turn into therapy or philosophy sessions where I talk them back from the ledge of assured amp destruction. However, the one I had yesterday was about a Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue and it really kinda blew my mind.

Customer calls semi-local tech A. A tells him he won't work on anything with a circuit board, including the Fender reissue series. That's...a choice...but whatever. (tell me you only want to work on the easiest stuff of all time without telling me...)

Customer calls semi-local tech B. B tells him they wooooould look at it, but these amps have "bad parts" and it "might not be worth it" to fix the unit.

Keep in mind this is for a relatively recent '65 PRRI. A limited version in a knotty pine cab, too.

Customer calls me. I say bring it over. The amp sounds great but the trem is weak and has a tick. I twiddle the bias pot for a few seconds to find the trem sweet spot, the trem gets deeper, the tick goes away, the customer is amazed I never even had to open the amp.

That was it - that was the entire problem. I also explained that with the almost non-existent idle noise and killer tone we were getting that the tubes are in excellent shape, so there's no reason to swap those either. I also explained they've been making the reissue line for 33 years now and there aren't some secret parts that are designed to fail - what could we possibly change in there to improve the tone you've already said you love? He was amazed I didn't try and sell him anything.

Is this really where a lot of "techs" are at now? It seems completely insane to me that a tech wouldn't want to see a Fender reissue. If vintage Fender is "Amp 101" the reissue line has got to be "Amp 102" as they've made more of those than they ever did the originals so any normal repair shop should be seeing them all.the.time. Not because they have issues, but because there are so many of them. I just couldn't understand why a new, clean, non-butchered Princeton Reverb was an automatic "no" from two shops.

<----------discuss---------->

I think these "tech's" have been watching too much YouTube!
These videos show pretty much ONLY amps with "serious" problems. However, for every amp that we see, there are THOUSANDS that are working fine! And thousands with minor problems.
Kinda like how all we see on Youtube about airplanes is crashes, when in reality, airplanes are BY FAR the safest form of transportation!!

 

[Captdan61]

I frequently have interactions with customers where there isn't anything actually wrong with their amp, but they've read that X can make something better or Y is a magic component or they've been told Z is designed to fail. Instead of doing any work, these appointments turn into therapy or philosophy sessions where I talk them back from the ledge of assured amp destruction. However, the one I had yesterday was about a Fender Princeton Reverb Reissue and it really kinda blew my mind.

Customer calls semi-local tech A. A tells him he won't work on anything with a circuit board, including the Fender reissue series. That's...a choice...but whatever. (tell me you only want to work on the easiest stuff of all time without telling me...)

Customer calls semi-local tech B. B tells him they wooooould look at it, but these amps have "bad parts" and it "might not be worth it" to fix the unit.

Keep in mind this is for a relatively recent '65 PRRI. A limited version in a knotty pine cab, too.

Customer calls me. I say bring it over. The amp sounds great but the trem is weak and has a tick. I twiddle the bias pot for a few seconds to find the trem sweet spot, the trem gets deeper, the tick goes away, the customer is amazed I never even had to open the amp.

That was it - that was the entire problem. I also explained that with the almost non-existent idle noise and killer tone we were getting that the tubes are in excellent shape, so there's no reason to swap those either. I also explained they've been making the reissue line for 33 years now and there aren't some secret parts that are designed to fail - what could we possibly change in there to improve the tone you've already said you love? He was amazed I didn't try and sell him anything.

Is this really where a lot of "techs" are at now? It seems completely insane to me that a tech wouldn't want to see a Fender reissue. If vintage Fender is "Amp 101" the reissue line has got to be "Amp 102" as they've made more of those than they ever did the originals so any normal repair shop should be seeing them all.the.time. Not because they have issues, but because there are so many of them. I just couldn't understand why a new, clean, non-butchered Princeton Reverb was an automatic "no" from two shops.

<----------discuss---------->

What town/ city are you in? I have a blonde fender custom vibrolux and the reverb seems almost no existent.

 

[tonepoet333]

My 1995 Fender DRRI and a Famous Tech Guru story.

I was living in San Francisco at the time and bought a new 1995 Fender DRRI ($795 back then!) and there was a known Tech Guru who had books out about Tube Amps and guitars. He had a shop and did repairs, sold modification kits, etc.

One day, I walk into his shop to buy one capacitor. I had heard that if you changed C25, the .001uf input coupling capacitor to .01uf it would give the amp richer tone.

I ask if he had that capacitor to sell. He says yes and what would I need it for.

I say: "I had heard that if you changed C25, the .001uf input coupling capacitor to .01uf it would give the amp richer tone."

"True. But you'll never be able to do it" he says.

I said "Why? It's 2 solder points. An easy job"

He says: "Impossible. It's a printed circuit board. Come back here and I'll show you"

He proceeds to show me a reissue that someone is having him upgrade with all hand-wiring. He picks up all the printed circuit boards that came out of it, holds them up and says "All junk. You should have me upgrade your amp like this."

I say "So, you're telling me that I just paid $795 for a cabinet and speaker and then I should pay you to completely gut this and rebuild it?"

He says "Yep. It's the only way".

I said "I would like to but one capacitor, please." and went home and changed the cap. BTW, it does make for a richer tone.

Needless to say, I lost all faith in that Tech Guru and found this book

I did all my own guitar and amp repairs thereafter and stopped going to amp and guitar Tech Gurus.

tonepoet
www.jackshiner.com

I

 

[ashtone54]

I took this to three different techs because it went from perfect to super distorted low volume randomly. All three charged me, all three said it was fixed, all three were wrong. One guy changed a volume pot. Which wasn’t the issue.
I opened it up, and after 5 minutes of poking around with a chop stick, I found a brown wire going to the power transformer that was hanging on by one strand of the stranded wire. Soldered it up and good to go.
I was surprised and disappointed that I could find the problem when three people I paid could not.

 

[Huddy]

I said "I would like to but one capacitor, please." and went home and changed the cap.

Any time someone refers to someone as a guru I cringe. Anytime someone refers to themselves as a guru I run like Forrest Gump… far far away.

 

[archetype]

View attachment 1399497
I took this to three different techs because it went from perfect to super distorted low volume randomly. All three charged me, all three said it was fixed, all three were wrong. One guy changed a volume pot. Which wasn’t the issue.
I opened it up, and after 5 minutes of poking around with a chop stick, I found a brown wire going to the power transformer that was hanging on by one strand of the stranded wire. Soldered it up and good to go.
I was surprised and disappointed that I could find the problem when three people I paid could not.

The best old-school TV/radio/audio service tech I knew in my youth said that the first step in troubleshooting is visual. He said that about 75% of the time he could spot the issue (eg: wire hanging on by a strand) or the symptom (eg: resistor smoked by something else).

 

[Gingerdin]

Put me in the self-taught category. I consider myself a hobbyist/builder, not a tech. I have built around two-dozen amps, all hand-wired. Only have had one or two brought back for problems, which ended up being a yanked input or speaker jack from trip-over-it syndrome. Did not/would not charge a bench fee for looking over my own build. Have worked on some other hand-wired builds too, and if substantial parts needed, would pass through with a "bench" fee, but I mainly do the work because I love to work on tube amps. Have trouble-shot on some solid state amps just to determine the problem, but I am up front that I prefer not to work on PCBs because my eyesight and dexterity weren't the best. I can at least see what I'm doing on hand-wired stuff. YMMV.

I'm in much the same bucket as your good self and I agree, I only work on things that I can see clearly.