Electronic repair

[Larry Fisher]

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