Amp repair cost — is this right?

Lets get this straight.

Those large power caps are about $15 each, MAX. OK? MAX. 

that's $120 raw cost then double that price as included in the repair. So we're at $240, plus and hour at $100 to put them in. Let's be generous and call it $150.

$390. $100 cost to return, max, as they get a discounted rate as they use the shipping service  (UPS/ Fed-EX) often. 

I'm having a tough time finding the other $810US in there.... 

It's impossible, in fact.

I have to stop myself from saying nasty things, here. I'm offended to the core.

The unwary are the prey for the wolves!

Between the shipping and the estimate you are already in for close to $400.00. If you don’t get it repaired you have thrown that money down the tubes. It’s your call!

Audiogon is a very strange place. I’m simply asking if this price is in the right range and getting some really strange responses that don’t answer that question.

I don’t see that as unreasonable. If one cap has already failed and it has 18 caps in it, its reasonable to assume that if they are all the same part that they will have similar reliability. Electrolytic caps have a sort of ’half life’ which is to say that after a certain amount of time about half of them have failed. The thing is, they go downhill after a while and even though they might appear to be working and the amp seems to sound alright, if you change out the caps the amp sounds better.


IME the typical ’half life’ of caps in a tube amp is about 20 years. Its a little longer in solid state stuff because there is less heat but that might mean only 5 extra years. But some caps have known problems and may not last so long... So changing out all the caps is a good idea if you like the amp. Otherwise you put the power transformer at risk and sometimes that part can be really hard to find and really expensive- at that point you may well find that its not worth repair. So if you like the amp get the caps changed and you can keep liking it.


It takes time to remove parts and replace them without making a mess of the project. My shop is cheap- about $90.00/hour; expect to pay about the same as a good mechanic charges.


Just the 8 ’large filter caps’ might cost about $800.00-$1200.00 if they are large computer grade parts often seen in many amps; that does not leave a lot of room for the rest of the caps and the labor.

Hi everyone. Thanks to @jafant for the suggestion I reached out to Music Technology in Virginia and spoke to a very helpful tech. He said they charge $120/hr for labor, plus a flat $25 fee for little stuff like diodes, resistors, and disposal cost. When I told him I was guessing $200 for caps he said that was probably a high estimate. I asked, without knowing what's wrong, if you are recapping an old amp how many hours would you spend? He said it depends on many things like point to point wiring, schematics of the amp, etcetera but figure on about average 3 hours, so $360, plus parts and return shipping. When I asked if $600-$800 was a reasonable guess he said that sounded too high...