I can’t make it work. ~or~ I don’t want to do what it would take to make it work. Same difference. There are good reasons that there are so few audio repair techs left, and I do not possess some magical business formula that would enable me to succeed where others have failed.
The techs that actually are succeeding in the repair field, tend to be specialists in one brand, or they have a large and efficient shop with high throughput. I don’t want to specialize, or get large and efficient, or have high throughput. So I have been offering repairs on high-end equipment of various brands. Here’s why that doesn’t work.
- Each piece requires research. I end up reading all kinds of forums threads and whatnot, just to discover each piece’s particular quirks. Like, is there a particular capacitor that tends to go bad? Or a transistor that gets fried from heat? I end up spending hours and hours on this kind of thing, and there’s no way people are going to pay me hourly rate for doing so.
And then I might never work on another unit just like it. It’s not a good use of my time. - Parts are going obsolete at an alarming rate. I spend too much time tracking down rare and genuine parts.
I might find myself half-way through a repair, and find myself unable to complete it due to some unobtainable part. - Parts are extremely expensive now. The things I buy regularly are up about 60% from 10 years ago, while general consumer inflation is about 40% for the same period. Also, tariffs. :^/
- QUAGMIRES: This is the big one! This happens to every tech. Some units resist repair, and will have some obscure, intermittent and difficult-to-troubleshoot problem, and because you can’t get parts anymore, it becomes extremely difficult and time-consuming to troubleshoot. Like, for example, “Is this microcontroller going intermittent?” I can’t just swap a new one in and try it! I have to dig much deeper, and spend even more time ruling out other components first. And I may get to the point, where I know it’s the microcontroller, but I cannot obtain one, and the unit is bricked. 🙁 I have now spent a lot of time on a repair, and already charged my customer several hundred dollars. My customer has to either graciously eat the cost, or I have to make a refund.
Quagmires are why electronics techs are kinda notorious for ghosting their clients. (I would never.)
The circuit board business, however, is doing well, and I am going to lean in to that.
Hoppe’s Brain Shop
And I’m going to invent some new things! Stay tuned.
Chris