@testpilot
So in my situation, you would have just shut your mouth and bit the bullet? Not my style. I just find that replacing two 16 pins chipsets + calibration and using 14 hours of labor is unjustified.
I called Classé Audio customer support to enquire their repair process. They indicated me to ship my amp to their repair center, but never told me that United Audio was a subcontractor.
My options:
1) Pay over $2,000 in repair cost and keep my $6,000 monoblocks
2) Refuse the repair estimate and try to find a repair shop which has Classé Audio CA-M600 schematics, parts and repair expertise?
3) Sell the remaining functional monoblock amp and take a $3000 loss since I purchase the pair last year? |
Arcticdeth - They replaced two 16 pins IC ($56/each)...
Jasonbourne52 - They did provide an estimate, but what choice did I have? Scrap my monoblock pair? $140/hour to repair an amplifier? I have owned 2 Mercedes and 1 Audi and both dealership repair tarifs were lower than United Radio’s...
Jafant - The amp sounds great, but at what cost? Paid $6000 for the used pair. If I include shipping + brokerage fees + repair cost, I basically purchased my monoblock a second time. |
Ok guys, I will just shut up my big mouth :-). Was just tryting to get some support from my Goner friends. Seems that paying top dollars for an amp repair is part of the hobby.
I feel like a cheap old bastard :-). Final reply on this subject. |
@onhwy61
The amp was always on protection mode with no audio output. |
@minorl
Big mouth (me) is back again to shed some additional light. I got charged $140 for the initial troubleshooting. This is their normal hourly rate. My guess is that it took them around 1 hour to identify the problem.
This is when they identified the 2 defective chipsets.
So my question is how could you come up with a 14 hours of labor time, if you found the problem in around 1 hour?
The Classé Audio amp is well designed and modular.
I opened up the amp cover to give a look at the location of these chipsets.
To get access to these 2 chipsets will take an experienced technician a maximum of 1 hour. To unsolder/resolder the 2 chipsets, another hour. To put back the PC board back in place another hour. Testing + warmup + bias adjustments around 2 hours. So around 5 hours of repair time.
How do I know this? I am a certified telecommunications technician and owned a telecommunications equipment repair facility for 9 years specializing in Cable TV equipment. The gear I repaired included RF amplifiers, line power supplies, spectrum analysers, modulators, frequency processors , satellite receivers, field strength meters, etc. I repaired test gear during those 9 years and never spent more than a day on the most difficult repair tasks.
Why did I not repair my amp myself you may ask? I did not want to get personnaly involved in this repair, since I am retired from the workforce and do not have access to test gear. So this is when I decided to send the equipment to United Audio.
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@minorl
I fully understand what you are saying. However, an experienced technician should easily find its way through the amp troubleshooting process and identify the faulty component(s). After a few years of experience, my technicians knew exactly or had a pretty good idea of the cause of any malfunction, on any specific manufacturer’s equipment.
When I had my repair shop, my most experienced technicians were working on the more complex gear. They never spent more than a work day to fix sophisticated telecommunications equipment. The rookie technicians were working on the less complex gear.
In a situation where the tech is having difficulties troubleshooting the gear, they could always ask a senior tech to help them out. Worse comes to worse, we contacted the manufacturer’s engineering department to get additional support.
United Radio is the exclusive Classé Audio service center for NA. They have access to the amp’s schematics and Classé Audio’s engineering department which is still located in Montreal, Canada.
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@abg2018
This was the first time I encountered an audio gear failure in 40 years into this hobby. I also filled you the UR forms and shipped the amp in. I received no e-mail or calls of any sort regarding my repair. I had to do all of the follow-ups myself via e-mail with Classé Audio CS, which was the intermediary between me and United Radio’s service department. The Classé Audio rep was very responsive and nice to work with.
United Radio via Classé’s CS provided me with a repair date which they missed by a few days. United Radio also made a mistake when shipping back the amp to Canada. They used a shipping company which does not provide customs brokerage services for Canadian customs clearance and over and above this, they indicated on the shipping documents that Livingston was my customs broker agent, which is false. Don’t have and never had any account with Livingston...
Dang, UPS, Purolator, DHL and Fedex all have a brokerage service, why not ship with one of these carrier? So my amp got stuck a few days at the Canadian Customs before somebody from the shipping company asked me the name of my customs broker.
United Radio should have asked me my preferred shipper/broker for the return of my equipment. |
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@vladedelman
United Radio (UR) was the only option provided as a service center from Classé Audio. What other options are you talking about? UR is the sole authorized repair center for Classé Audio in NA...I would never send my gear elsewhere than the authorized manufacturer's service center. They normally would have access to schematics, components and engineering support.
True that I agreed to the deal and the amp is now working fine. I am only expressing my opinion relative to the actual cost of the repair. FYI, I had my two previous Krell FPB350 MCX monoblock amps recapped at the Krell factory. My total upgrade cost was $1,500 ($750/amp). So this is kind of my repair cost reference point. Call it bad manners if you want, but I do feel the repair cost was out of proportion, compared to my Krell repair experience and don't feel ashamed of calling it out.
Not sure if you read the whole post, when you are indicating that I don't know what I am talking about servicing equipment. I did own a telecommunications equipment repair shop + managed directly/indirectly 2 other electronic repair shops during my career. I am very familiar with all the Capex/Opex costs involved in operating an service repair department.
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Ok guys, I presented my case and thank you for the discussions. I’m out and will not post any additional comments, since there is nothing new to discuss/debate. I have appreciated the majority of your comments. I just need to enjoy the music now! |
@sokogear
While I basically agree with you, this is only true in a competitive market where you would have multiple products/services purchasing options made available to you. |
@rsf507 +1
Thank you for your good words. I’m currently listening some music on my system and enjoying what I am listening to. I guess my grudge will be amortized over the next few years of musical enjoyment without any gear failure. |
