[[email protected]]

Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.

[Jon Yaeger]

in article ,
at wrote on 8/23/06 2:31 PM:

Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.



I think the market is limited unless you have a niche.

If you live in a metro area, there are opportunities to repair musical
amplifiers, which often take a beating and are in fairly regular need of
service.

As far as repairing vintage audio gear is concerned, it would be best to
focus on high-end gear such as McIntosh, which has a high intrinsic value.
The problem with repairing all tube gear is that many owners don't want to
spend too much to bring gear up to spec. For example, you can buy
inexpensive Japanese receivers (e.g. Kenwood, Sansui, etc.) but you'll have
to replace virtually every coupling cap and probably the power electros,
too. Very time consuming.

If you can't make $60/hr plus repairing the gear I wouldn't be bothered.

There is competition in almost everything that is lucrative. You have to
distinguish yourself from competitors, either in terms of quality, price,
turn-around times, etc. Marketing is key for any business.

I fix computers and specialize in Macintosh component-level repairs. There
isn't a lot of competition there and if you are any good you can make more
than $60/hr.

There are lots of competitors in Windows PC repairs but the pool of users is
huge compared to tube enthusiasts.

Jon

[[email protected]]

wrote:
Questions on whether fixing-for-pay is a good idea.

I fix stuff on a regular basis, for which I _never_charge a cent, even
for parts... tubes being the only exception. This because:

a) Even those who are friends that I do repairs for have no clue as to
what it takes to diagnose, cure, test and then double-check the
entirety on even a simple repair. Anyone can replace a fuse, few take
the time to determine *exactly* why the fuse blew in the first place
and fewer take the time to be sure that the immediate problem was not
masking something yet deeper.
b) Those who are not friends get a pleasant surprise. However, I take
my sweet time about it.
c) It is a hobby. Done on my own time and at my own pace. It stops
being a hobby when there are financial and time pressures.
d) The moment there are time and cost considerations, there is the
temptation to cut corners. Fix the obvious problems, dig no deeper, go
no further. Have no fun.

There is a living at it. It will grow over time. If you are good at it,
have the hide of a rhinocerous and the patience of any given three
Jobs, you will do fine at it. But it is customer service to a
particularly peculiar segment of the population... just read some of
the posts here.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

[Bob H.]

Years ago, I sharpened my tube-related skills for a while by buying up
old table radios, figuring out the circuits, fixing them and selling
them on ebay.
Trust me, tube radios are a labor of love, not money. Unless the radio
is worth a lot of money, or is a sentimental item, you won't make much
money fixing them. Expect several hours minimum on each, many parts
which aren't available and have to be replaced by improvised new parts,
and the count yourself lucky if you break $10 an hour, minus parts.
That may be generous.
I did (and do) occasionally take on projects for friends and family for
nothing. Billing is a lot easier that way ; )
The radio fixin' network, however, is great. There's a lot of talent
out there restoring radios for fun. There are also some good books on
realistic repair of tube radios. There may be something to
specializing in tombstone, etc vintage radios.

I imagine tube hi-fi, etc, may be more lucrative.

Hope you find your niche.

Bob H.


wrote:
Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.

[Trevor Wilson]

wrote in message
oups.com...
Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.

**I've been in the repair biz for 30 years. I service some pretty exotic
stuff, along with a bunch of crap. The one common thing I have noticed, is
that the business is shrinking. In all areas. Sure, there will always be a
bunch of people who are dedicated to their equipment and will always want it
serviced correctly. However, I will relate a short story about a recent
client.

My client first met me, when I demo'd some expensive amplification about 10
years ago. He had purchased another brand and wanted me to trade the old
stuff in. I could not afford to offer him a reasonable trade in, so he
eventually purchased elsewhere. (Amplifier cost around AUS$7,000.00) A
couple of weeks ago, he presented me with his purchase, for me to repair, as
it had failed. Although the amp is worth around AUS$6k, he specified a limit
of AUS$500.00, since that is how much he needed to spend to give him music
from any of the mass market brands. As he said, since his children are
growing and home cinema is the norm for the family, critical listening to
music is less important than it once was.

Last week I received a fancy, Chinese CD player for service. It cost
AUS$3,500.00. It's construction is of an extremely high calibre. The finest
components are used in it's construction and it has a couple of tubes in the
output stages. Very impressive and I would estimate that if it were
constructed in a first world nation, it would probably cost AUS$7,000.00.
HOWEVER, here's the kicker: The FOB cost is around AUS$600.00. Factoring in
all the usual costs and mark-ups, the retail price SHOULD be around
AUS$1,800.00. That means someone is being very greedy. Ultimately, what will
occur is that another company will undercut the company with a similar
product. A round of price cutting will occur and consumers will be able to
buy very good products at very low prices. So low, in fact, that service
people will not be able to economically repair the stuff.

OTOH, I have good experience in a number of repair activities that many
people do not and have built up a clientele which enables me to make a
reasonable living. Not like it used to be, I might add. I used to buy a case
of French champagne every month. Now, I'm lucky to buy one bottle a year.

These stories are typical of what is occurring in the business.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

[Ned Carlson]

wrote:

Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment?

If you expand your business to repairing guitar amps, that expands
your potential client base a lot.

This is like any other service business, what's your potential client
base, what kind of competition do you have, what rates will the
market bear, and lastly, how fast and good are you?

The really good tube amp techs I know in Chicago bill like $40-$60
an hour, and have plenty of work, if one is really good, one can
graduate past having to do the warranty repair grind. Being
a warranty station is pretty important to bringing in business
to a repair place, otherwise you've got to depend on networking
and word of mouth.

Doing it for fun, taking your time, and taking whatever money
people feel your talent is worth, won't generate get-rich-quick
money, but it'll avoid the grief and pressure that comes from
customers when they're being billed $50 an hour, and you can count
whatever you make as gravy.

It'd be easier to be an attorney, then you get to bill $150
an hour for scribbling up papers. The bar exam couldn't be
any worse than the CET test... ;-)

--
Ned Carlson
SW side of Chicago, USA
www.tubezone.net

[Sander deWaal]

said:


Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.


I don't know the situation where you live (somewhere in the US, I
presume), but over here in the Netherlands, there's not much potential
for repairing *anything* electronic and make a "good" living out of
it.

I do "vintage" audio repair as a hobby, I tried some 10 years ago to
make a living out of it, but even with taking up assorted projects
like wiring studios etc., I couldn't make it work.

I must say, I'm not much of a business man however, so maybe someone
with a more business-like mentality might succeed.


But vintage audio is, at least to me, a labour of love.

Ask Patrick Turner, he can barely make a living out of his business,
despite (or thanks to) the fact that he works thoroughly, delivers
good work, and doesn't put IC amplifiers underneath a tube chassis, as
some guy here seems to be doing from time to time.

--
"Due knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl miss steaks."

[Patrick Turner]

wrote:

Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.

I have always experienced a huge amount of competition in just about every
aspect of my life. A man has to compete for a woman, then when he does get
one he has to compete for her attention, and a decent BJ still is very rare
from any wife.....

Then before i began my own business I worked for the man in a company
and competed with all the other dudes.

After starting my own construction building business in 1981 there must
have been hundreds
of other builders who could have attracted prospective clients but i didn't
worry
because I knew I was at least as good as the other guys, and after doing a
few jobs the
word spread that I was a competant contractor and I hardly ever had to
advertize in the newspapers
and I didn't even bother having an add in the Yellow Pages.

My knees failed in about 1993, and suddenly I couldn't do the hard work of
construction any more.
I was very competitive because I'd do most of the work in a house extension
myself,
rather than hire too many guys who would always take longer than i would.

I quit the building game and spent a year or two doing a self imposed
apprenticeship
when I build my own test gear and a few amps and radio sets with tubes,
transistors opamps, whatever.
I spent countless evenings till dawn trying to figure out how tube and
transistor gear worked
by building working samples of gear and repairing dead gear.
I began to repair muso amps for low pay, then moved to hi fi gear.
Soon I found I was better than everyone else in my town of 300,000 people
at fixing and making tube gear
and certainly I became the only guy making new tube gear.
I learnt to hire a man to fix all the solid state crap because he was
faster and better at it than I was and charged
me a pittance, but I take responsibility for the gurrantee and I do the
talking to customers and pay the
cost of the Yellow Pages add and the website. I find this works much better
than doing ALL the repairs
myself; just today I completed an extensive repair to a 1935 Fisk Radiola
radio set
which had been rather butchered by previous repairists and old father time.



I had to accept a huge drop in wage rates for fixing and making audio
stuff, because
all these people who expect a radio fix don't like paying what they would
pay a plumber.
A plumber might charge $90 per hour like my mechanic at the local garage.
But the guy with the ****in radio wants a fix for under $100, and that fix
may take
all day, if you have to rewind an oscilator coil and replace 3 tube
sockets.
8 hrs work at $90 is a total of $720, then there are the new parts cost.

Maybe you only earn $150 total and then you'll get ppl who won't pick up
the set when you have it working well again.

Audio gear is the poor relation of entertainment equipment.
Didn't you realize that TV watching is what most folks do of an evening?
learn to repair chinese TV sets and you'll always do OK.
Also learn to repair CD players, because they are always failing.


So you have to be able to do a quick fix, and be versatile to handle all
the solid state crap
and other non collectable garbage like cheap speakers with rotten surrounds
and
dead cassette players ppl bring to be repaired because that's the bread and
butter
and the vintage stuff is rare.

In my town of 300,000 people there is simply not enough people to
give me a proper living living from fixing old collectable tube gear.

However, I am 59, have paid off my house and have no mortgage, have
reasonable health,
have no dependant children, no female partner, I don't take holidays, I
don't drive an expensive car,
I don't smoke, I don't drink more than a single glass occasionally, I play
chess
when I'm not at home or not taking a little bicycle ride of 80kms around
the town,
and I get by rather well on an income which is less than about aud $7,000
per annum
and which is below the taxable threshold and about 1/5 of the average wage
for Australians
at this time.

I don't know why the rest of the population needs to have an income of
$35,000 at least
before they ****in work.

I will work for less, because I can't work in industries which would pay a
shirtload more
like they used to when I had knees that could stand standing for 8 hrs
and all the bending crawling and hard task stuff i did with glee until i
turned about 50.


In the year 2000, I went online and started a website which I thought would
bring me business.
It did nothing at all for me for the first 3 years, and even now despite
the website size of 18MB and the fact
that I may indeed appear to know enough to effect a repair on old gear, the
amount
of work i get from the website is maybe only worth a profit of $2,000 PER
ANNUM!
I doubt the profit is real, since I spent 4 mths of using 4 days out of 7
each week compiling the
4th edition of my website this year.
Nobody pays me a cent for all that time I used to build the website.
But I'd rather be busy being "creative" even if its not profitable;
It is all better than having to dig trenches and wheel in the concrete in a
wheelbarrow,
and build buildings for people, and put up with all the rig-marole,
paperwork and hassles and BS along the way.
I used to be so happy to please my building clients, but now I'm happy
pleasing
people who want me to fix their old gear and occasionally I get to build
something
interesting like a pair of 50W mono amps with 845, for a few grand.

If I lived in Sydney or Melbourne, I'd get more business because the
population are
10 times larger and I could specialize more but then there is more
competion, so I may as well
stay put in a smaller town and and be prepared to do a larger range of
things for people
because its worth the lifestyle, since my town seems so much nicer than the
bigger cities here.

I'm playing life and work how I find it.

Don't expect too much.

Hardly anyone who is an artist or professional artisan or repairist is
getting
average weekly earnings; the real jobs are in the IT industry, mainstream
service trades, banks, law, medicine, etc.


There simply is nothing much in the repair trade for old junk.

This is the main reason why I don't have much competion; the pay sucks.

The other reason why competion is declining around me is that the few other
guys who really know
anything much because they have been at it for 50 years are all dying.
I only learned 10 years ago, and have another 20 years left maybe, i'm just
a junior...

So as time goes my competion will expire (if i don't expire first), and
although
the demand for repairs to old junk is in gradual decline, there is a steady
trickle more likely
to come in my direction.
I think I will die at about the right time because who on earth will have
the stomach to
want to deal with a 40 year old Sony CD player 20 years from now?

Meanwhile I continue to earn just enough of a wage from audio work to keep
me in bicycle tyres
and coffee where I play chess, and my wealth far outweighs the debts by
factor of 50:1, and
improving.


Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

Trevor Wilson wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Is there much room for new people to get into the business of repairing
tube/vintage electronic equipment? Or is this field overcrowded with
competitors or lacking enough customers like some other business
fields? I don't require making a huge amount of money at this, as long
as it's not extremely difficult to make money. I've tried a couple of
other home businesses in the last few years which were extremely
difficult to make money at due to the market being flooded with
competition, thus making it extremely hard to even get noticed by
customers.

**I've been in the repair biz for 30 years. I service some pretty exotic
stuff, along with a bunch of crap. The one common thing I have noticed, is
that the business is shrinking. In all areas. Sure, there will always be a
bunch of people who are dedicated to their equipment and will always want it
serviced correctly. However, I will relate a short story about a recent
client.

My client first met me, when I demo'd some expensive amplification about 10
years ago. He had purchased another brand and wanted me to trade the old
stuff in. I could not afford to offer him a reasonable trade in, so he
eventually purchased elsewhere. (Amplifier cost around AUS$7,000.00) A
couple of weeks ago, he presented me with his purchase, for me to repair, as
it had failed. Although the amp is worth around AUS$6k, he specified a limit
of AUS$500.00, since that is how much he needed to spend to give him music
from any of the mass market brands. As he said, since his children are
growing and home cinema is the norm for the family, critical listening to
music is less important than it once was.

Last week I received a fancy, Chinese CD player for service. It cost
AUS$3,500.00. It's construction is of an extremely high calibre. The finest
components are used in it's construction and it has a couple of tubes in the
output stages. Very impressive and I would estimate that if it were
constructed in a first world nation, it would probably cost AUS$7,000.00.
HOWEVER, here's the kicker: The FOB cost is around AUS$600.00. Factoring in
all the usual costs and mark-ups, the retail price SHOULD be around
AUS$1,800.00. That means someone is being very greedy. Ultimately, what will
occur is that another company will undercut the company with a similar
product. A round of price cutting will occur and consumers will be able to
buy very good products at very low prices. So low, in fact, that service
people will not be able to economically repair the stuff.

OTOH, I have good experience in a number of repair activities that many
people do not and have built up a clientele which enables me to make a
reasonable living. Not like it used to be, I might add. I used to buy a case
of French champagne every month. Now, I'm lucky to buy one bottle a year.

These stories are typical of what is occurring in the business.

I have a CD player in for service with a noise problem where thing has begun to
make a buzz
because the signal which I think goes to the platter motor is getting into the
audio path.
Its an elaborate and probably pretentious cd player and with two output tubes,
is circular
in shape and the base is carved from a heavy block of red coloured wood and the
top
is a circular block of aluminium, and it weighs about 20Kgs when 2Kg is all that
a CD player need weigh.
Its an absolute PITA to pull apart and service, and the ****ing distributors
won't give any information support
so the after sales service is locked into their expensive hands.

The undercutting you speak of doesn't seem to stop guys from buying
such elaborate hi-end gear which fails just like the cheap **** that is
elsewhere and everywhere.


When you look in the back of a modern TV set, the electronics board is like a
cheap
PC motherboard, about $100 cost from someplace in Asia.
But the set might have cost $7,000 in a shop.
The issue of greed is a non issue since buyers don't mind a $7,000 hit for TV.
There is a very negligible relationship between the cost of production and the
shop price.
Hardly anyone likes paying to repair whimsical luxury goods they can do without.

As I mentioned in my other post, if you stay at the repair-of-old-junk trade
long enough,
the old junk will outlive its owners, and you'll get to outlive the other FOBs
in the business.
( FOB I guess means ****in Old *******, no?) .
In 20 years Phil Allison will be the ONLY count in the world who could repair a
Sony cd101 player.....

Anyway, youse must have been greedy to be able to afford a case of French
Champagne each month!

What a huge waste, no? I could never want to **** so expensively!

Patrick Turner





--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com