How to best approach amp repair for a living...

[cbass]

*rant on* Our charter school is PDG (pretty damn good, at least compared to the bulk of California public schools). But they still subscribe to the state line on drugs, OK? Which is, all drugs are vile, evil, and horrifying, except alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, which are OK if you're a grown up. So when I admitted to my kids that I may have occasionally inhaled cannabis, they thought my teeth were going to fall out, I'd become insane, and go immediately to jail, casting them out on the street. *rant off*

My kids were always sick the week they had there DARE programs at school.

I'm guessing most of you can afford to send your kids to a nice school.Or live on the nice side of town with good public schools.Try seeing what goes on in an inner city school.Or a poor rural school.The other 85% aren't so lucky

My kids don't even have fucking books.My 9th grader brings algebra homework in and asks for help.Well lets look in your book.He says we aren't allowed to bring them home.
They don't even have enough books for his history class,they have to share.

I quit school when they started doing lockdowns and running dogs through everyones shit.LIke we were all criminals.Maybe I could have been something who know's but I wasn't about sit around and take that shit.

[Prairie Dawg]

I'm prolly the last person to think this but can we get back on task here? A separate thread might be nice-people are passionate about the schools their kids attend but it is as far from how to run an amp business on a small scale as anything I've heard about.

Not to say people shouldn't squawk about it. In my professional experience the people who run the schools have decided they are judge, jury and executioner. If there's anything I don't like it's school administrators, exceeded only by preachers. One thing I hated as a prosecutor was when a preacher came to my office, sat his fat ass down, started using up my oxygen and started telling me how to do my job.

[cbass]

I'm prolly the last person to think this but can we get back on task here? A separate thread might be nice-people are passionate about the schools their kids attend but it is as far from how to run an amp business on a small scale as anything I've heard about.

Not to say people shouldn't squawk about it. In my professional experience the people who run the schools have decided they are judge, jury and executioner. If there's anything I don't like it's school administrators, exceeded only by preachers. One thing I hated as a prosecutor was when a preacher came to my office, sat his fat ass down, started using up my oxygen and started telling me how to do my job.

Hey I'm a fat Administrator\ Preacher.I could tell you how to do your job no problem.

Oh yea I love attorneys Especially state paid ones.

[Prairie Dawg]

I'm prolly the last person to think this but can we get back on task here? A separate thread might be nice-people are passionate about the schools their kids attend but it is as far from how to run an amp business on a small scale as anything I've heard about.

Not to say people shouldn't squawk about it. In my professional experience the people who run the schools have decided they are judge, jury and executioner. If there's anything I don't like it's school administrators, exceeded only by preachers. One thing I hated as a prosecutor was when a preacher came to my office, sat his fat ass down, started using up my oxygen and started telling me how to do my job.

Hey I'm a fat Administrator\ Preacher.I could tell you how to do your job no problem.

Oh yea I love attorneys Especially state paid ones.

Are you waiting for a huffy response? Not gonna happen, sir. Can we puh-leeze return to the topic du jour?

[Structo]

Before we go back to the topic, which is a home business amp repair, all I will say about public schools is this.

About fifteen years ago a friend told me that at his son's school, I believe he was in the fourth grade, the teacher asked them one day:

Does anybody's mommy or daddy drink alcohol at home?

And, Does anybody's mommy or daddy smoke funny looking cigarettes?

No kidding, asking the kids to rat out their parents.

D.A.R.E. at work.

So back to amp repair.

I wish I could do it as well. My towns demographics aren't that great and I have always had a problem with motivation.

That is, kicking myself in the arse to do something that is beneficial to me.

[M Fowler]

$45 bench fee plus parts cost and any additional repair time agreed upon with owner.

[dorrisant]

Okay... how much should be charged per hour for repairs? How much should be charged for biasing or retubing and biasing?
I am charging $35/half hour $70/hour for repairs that are brought to me. $30/$60 for the ones that are arranged by the music shop. This may sound steep... but I don't charge much over my cost for parts, just enough to cover cost and shipping and a few bucks to the red ($5-$10). Am I screwing up?

Tony

[Reeltarded]

Whatever local market says. I wouldn't have any half hour rate. A bench charge of one-half hour that pays toward the first real hour of work is a better idea. $65/hr is what I charge for every kind of job I do. IT, recording, guitar repair...

[dorrisant]

Bench fee is 1/2hr. I charge this for assessment. The rest is on the hour.

Tony

[boots]

I worked in a Pioneer/Kenwood/etc. warranty repair shop in the early 90's, and the going rate at that time was $40/hour, with a $20 minimum. Some repairs were quick and easy, and others took days to wade through. The shop paid me a 40% commission (on billed labor), so at the end of the year, it averaged out to making about $7 an hour.

That wasn't much above minimum wage at the time. A tough way to make a living.

I always figured if I could do repairs out of my own shop (at home), and not have to owe the shop 60% of what I make, it could almost work. But you need to have enough volume to stay busy. That's a challenge in a smaller community. And I don't really want to live in a big city just to score a lot of work. It's a conundrum!

Anyway, if the going rate in 1992 was $40/hour, then I would think that $50/hour or more would be considered fair now.

Just as a comparison for perspective, my boss is able to charge over $100/hour for an engineer, and just under $100/hour for a geologist. It seems like a skilled electronic tech, especially with an AAS degree, ought to easily be worth $50/hour to the client.

Unfortunately, cheap consumer electronic gear is cheap enough to just replace, so it drives the repair prices way down.

[cbass]

Are you waiting for a huffy response? Not gonna happen, sir. Can we puh-leeze return to the topic du jour?

easy there hoss I was just tryin to be funny.I used to have a huffy bicycle when I was a kid.

I found an attorney bitchin about other proffesions humorus.Its uasualy the other way around

[Prairie Dawg]

No problem brother it comes with the territory.

You were lucky. My first bike was a Rollfast that looked like my old man grabbed it off a junk pile somewhere.

I don't advertise it to my amp customers but some of them are in the business and say "Hey....haven't I seen you somewhere?" The ones who know me are sometimes a little envious because I found something to do that I like, there's really no downside except doing a good job even if I lose a little money and sleep over it, and most of the people you meet aren't dicks. All of us have to find something enjoyable that lets us detoxify and forget about what we've seen and heard during the day.

[xtian]

Just got off a call. My first unhappy customer. Brought in his Fender Tweed Bassman RI complaining of small, crappy sound. He said, I think its the caps. Please do a cap job.

I diagnosed bad plate resistors. Replaced five of them, amp was back to kick-ass. Cost less than the cap job, which I didn't do, because it didn't need it. See where this is headed?

Guy says, hey, you didn't do the cap job you promised!

Damn! Shouldn't have picked up the phone!

LESSON: When the owner of the store who contracts repairs from you offers to interface with the customers for you, say YES! and then don't talk to the customers.

[Colossal]

If an amp tech says something in the woods and there is no customer around to hear, is he still wrong?

[BTF]

This is the one area in which I had the most trouble. If you can get a go-between to handle the customers, GET ONE!!!

I had guys who wanted to watch, who told sob stories until I did the job for free or a reduced price (never could get the sob story to placate the owner, though...), I would jump items in line waiting to be repaired because someone was in a hurry and couldn't wait, etc. All tended to cause problems.

On the other hand, I had a belly dancer/Celtic harpist who liked to watch me work on her tube D.I. and harp pickup.

No problem there...