I don't know who posted the desire to fix electronics because the header was missing and the sig line told me even less. Please tag your posts people!! I fixed these danged things for 20 years. I'm still burned out on them. I have no problem recalling all the drawbacks. Here they are as they boil off the top of my head......... PARTS, PARTS, PARTS, PARTS you never have that particular part that happens to break, if you do, it's worn and beat up looking because you ordered it a long time ago and it's been bouncing around in your parts box all these years as you go around town. the part number on the part has worn off for the same reason circuit boards are very expensive, so you don't stock them, you order them as you need them. They send you a board that doesn't work either. Returning them means they should be insured for the replacement amount, usually over the $100 minimum that UPS provides, which means extra shipping expense. You now have the time to go to the house the first time to diagnose the problem, time to order the board including looking up the part number, phone number, and all them other irritating numbers they need, time to go back out to the house to install the board, (hopefully it works, or nothing else is wrong in the meantime) and now you have to repackage the board, return ship it, fill out the RMA (return merchandise authorization) and hope you get credit for the board and your shipping. Bookkeeping screws up, you're charged for the board, but the credit didn't make the trip, the dealer won't pay for postage citing "that's the cost of doing business", and the board they sent was either the wrong board, or the board didn't fix the problem. MORE TIME IS SPENT TO CLEAR UP THE MESS THAN DOING THE CALL. and the customer expects you to fix the problem on the first trip for next to nothing or for free because you only spent a few minutes in their home. The customer whines about the price and you have to spew the usual chatter about the cost of doing business and they turn a deaf ear. Getting technical support from the factory is getting to be a real joke. Let's say you have a malfunction that is intermittent and the factory is unwilling to ship you every board in the instrument to fix it. I can't blame them, boards are expensive and the problem may not be the board. IF the factory tech is available, he/she will not have a clue as to your problem because you don't have all the answers to their questions, and they only have to sound like they know what the problem is. Remember, they're paid by the hour in an air conditioned office and don't have to worry that much about getting things done in a timely fashion to reduce their expenses. Regardless, that means more time on the phone, and more time the customer has to pay for what they don't want to pay for because they feel you ought to know the product so well that you shouldn't have to call anyone for help. Mechanical parts are prone to failure. Such parts as a push-push switch get little tiny particulates in them that jams the tiny mechanisms and renders the part useless. So you package everything in baggies or zip-locks or vaccuum sealed pouches with pretty labels on them so you can tell what they are and they work like new when you pull them to install. This is more time spent doing something other than the actual repair in the home...... inventory maintenance. Replacing one key on a keyboard can take well over an hour because at the factory they have jigs and machines that assemble these things making in the field repairs a virtual pain in the butt. Now you reassemble and the key doesn't work or some blasted thing that was in the way or the cableing was too short for field repairs got dislodged, misplaced, bent, screwed up, etc. while you were concentrating your efforts on some other area of the instrument. The cost to the customer is well over $100 just to install a $3 part on an instrument that is $400 to $4000 new. Listening to the whining that follows coming from a brain that has only one thing on their mind, (enjoying the instrument) gets to be a bit old after a while. Getting paid by someone other than the instrument owner is a whole new bag of worms. The factory usually finds a way to NOT pay citing paperwork missing or not filled out correctly, bookkeeping errors, improper handling of returned parts, improper repair proceedures, excessive rates, lost in the mail, and the like. Then if you do all these things correctly, you get paid a few months down the road with the factory citing the fact that they are really huge and don't really give a rip about your puny little bill for $75 or $142.90 or whatever. When the check finally comes, you've got so much time wrapped up in the call that the attractve $$$/hr no longer looks so good. Keep a log of your time spent on each call out of the home. Some calls you come out like a bandito but a bunch of them will be a real pain. AND IF THAT AIN'T ENOUGH, the call you did a month or three ago is now exhibiting the same symptoms, (maybe a different part responsible, maybe not) and you have to honor/explain your warranty. Them teeny little wires going into teeny little connectors are screwing up but you don't have a clue which one it is, or the owner is a heavy smoker and the contacts are heavily coated with tar, bacon grease, or they live near a sulphur hot springs and the H2SO4 particulates in the air are turning everything metal in the area GREEN!! Piano work pays better and there's better support from the factories. It took me 20 years to learn that ......... some of us are slow learners eh?? Lar Larry Fisher RPT specialist in players, retrofits, and other complicated stuff phone 360-256-2999 or email larryf@pacifier.com http://www.pacifier.com/~larryf/homepage.html (revised 9/96) Beau Dahnker pianos work best under water
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