Mend it mark

[exxos]

Stumbled across this amplifier repair video. Seems like a fun guy. Knows what he's doing it seems. Also a UK guy !



From what I can tell he might be in Telford which isn't to far away from me really. Be a good one to go hang out with the guy for a day sometime I guess.

[chronicthehedgehog]

I've got a couple of amps that need a refurb and it's been hard to find anyone to do them. Telford's not far from me either so I'll bear him in mind.

Not a priority for me at the moment though :) and one of them works

[exxos]

Yeah, I've not done audio stuff for 10+ years now. Think this was the last amp I worked on . viewtopic.php?p=92752#p92752

I think around that time I tried to repair a midi hi-fi for a customer. I managed to get it half working in the end but it is becomes a point of how many hours do you spend on something versus what it is worth and how much people are willing to pay. Pretty much why I stopped doing Atari repairs and upgrades for people because you can spend a huge amount of hours on even a "simple" thing. People never wanted to pay for the time.

After my dad passed away several years ago, I kinda lost motivation for all the audio stuff. But these days I'm not really motivated with electronic stuff in general any more. Plus the guy who was working for all the nightclubs etc was getting me the amps, he was giving me right pieces of crap in the end. Claiming "they were working when he removed them". Nope. Plus all sorts of lighting projector modules and all sorts. I ended up spending a lot of time and not really getting paid for stuff in the end. Stuff could take 1-2 hours to take the thing apart never mind spending time on diagnosing the faults and doing the repairs etc.

Those large amps I worked on was the kind of stuff that took two people to lift the things because they were that heavy. Though at the time they were moving over to digital amps which basically weighed nothing. So I doubt anyone would even touch more modern stuff these days. The clubs probably just buy new amps now. With all the custom chips it would be pretty much impossible to repair them I think these days anyway.

Similar when I was designing power digital amps. All it comes down to is marketing as opposed to how good the actual product is. The amplifier I posted was a prime example. It was a total POS but was very popular and expensive. I tried selling audio stuff and some of the modules are even still in my web store. There just doesn't seem to be anyone out there who would actually value quality stuff any more. As long as a marketing blurb convinces them to part with the money, nothing else really matters these days.It all just became simply a bad business to be in.

In terms of mark, no idea what prices he charges. Though if he has a backlog, he is likely not charging enough. Looks like he has a lot of skills ,even doing cabinetwork and all sorts. Quite a impressive setup I think there. I used to use 500W halogen lamps for "speakers" :D

[chronicthehedgehog]

Yes I can imagine it's time consuming.

I had one of my amps repaired a couple of times. Same problem each time though - failed phono stage put the amp into safety mode. I asked him about refurbs but he was never that interested - I suppose as it's too time consuming.

They're both late 70s Sansui amps: AU-414 and AU-719. The 414 has the phono stage problem but the 719 which is a bit of a beast works fine. It's bound to go at some stage so I wanted the 414 as a backup.

They're quite collectible so worth fixing but obvs. there's a limit cost wise.

A lot of people tend to recap them themselves so my original intention was to get good at soldering by practicing on Spectrums and the like, then building up to the amps. However, since they're pretty complex internally and my soldering is OK at best I've given up on the idea :D
Actually it's desoldering that trips me up and I'd hate to destroy the 719 :o

[exxos]

I had one of my amps repaired a couple of times. Same problem each time though - failed phono stage put the amp into safety mode. I asked him about refurbs but he was never that interested - I suppose as it's too time consuming.

How the heck does a phono stage fail :roll:

They're both late 70s Sansui amps: AU-414 and AU-719. The 414 has the phono stage problem but the 719 which is a bit of a beast works fine. It's bound to go at some stage so I wanted the 414 as a backup.

They're quite collectible so worth fixing but obvs. there's a limit cost wise.

Yeah I built two prototype digital amps which are in my blog. The parts alone cost £400. Nobody would pay that, nevermind more for actually all the time and turning a profit on them. Again why I just simply abandoned the whole thing.

A lot of people tend to recap them themselves

Yep that PSaudio amp I had in 3-4 times. He tried to re-cap It and broke lots of tracks. The output stage failed because it sucked, and he broke tracks trying to fix it. You can guess how it all went. In the end there was more bodgewires than traces on the circuit board. Around that time I closed my audio stuff down. It got trashed again and there would be no way to fix it anymore. It was a good time to "avoid" doing it again :lol:

so my original intention was to get good at soldering by practicing on Spectrums and the like, then building up to the amps. However, since they're pretty complex internally and my soldering is OK at best I've given up on the idea :D
Actually it's desoldering that trips me up and I'd hate to destroy the 719 :o

Yeah, always a risk :(

I mean if you was just something simple on the circuit board which you needed changing I could probably help with it. But spending hours dismantling and reassembling stuff ,shipping it is about and hours of fault finding etc, its not something I want to do any more. I think the majority of the time the output transistors fails and its generally simple. But as to why phono stage would fail.. Stuff like that can end up going down the rabbit hole because like with Atari stuff, you end up diagnosing and fixing basically design faults on the thing :(