Repair of Classe products

I have few door stops, may buy one in the future and others own lots of units that will need repairs. Do you know of a US of A based tech that will service them or were you more curious about me?

I remember back in the day when GAS closed their doors. The only place you could get them repaired was at GAS Works. They had the schematics, while no one else did. I tried many decent techs but none could ever get the repair right on my Ampzilla. 

Hopefully, Classe will release their schematics to the public so folks aren't left with door stops and boat anchors.

Schematics are not really needed when fixing circuits as simple as an amplifier. This is involving fixing the amplifier proper, that is, not any unique and complex circuits pre the amplifier or auxiliary to the amplifier.

I know techs who spent their entire working time fixing gear and using the schematics for an item, maybe one time in 10 or 20.

The company just went down, it will take time for the schematics to appear. In most cases they will appear and have in the past, when a given company went down.

The more paranoid people get ... the more lucky I get with good prices for the given gear. The first 20 years of having my hands in any given gear, I did so without ever having a schematic available. (pre-internet)

In the cases of the most complex gear, like home theater processors, 99% of the time, the given implementation of of complex circuit pathways is done by the tech book, to utter perfection. So one can obtain the tech manual for the chips in question, and then see the exact same layout (suggested implementation) in the gear as is shown in the tech manual for the chip. Unique circuits are actually fairly rare. Unique Unknowns (in circuitry) cause high failure rates to appear unevenly and far more often than any company can afford, and are, for the most part... studiously avoided.

Your problem becomes software related for such items but even there, the code is generally bog standard and some aspects are unique or subtly altered from stock forms.

Getting a competent person who can handle all of that under one roof, is a rarity, especially since time is money, so the mind and hand doing the repair have to be free of time constraints to some degree. Or financially compensated for the extra hassle, and this is the rub, as they say. Costs can be too high on the repairs for the complex gear like processors.

I expect some competent and seasoned Classe tech will appear and become the ’go to person’ for classe gear. Simply as they can get things done right in a reasonable time and costing frame.

Don’t panic, is the byline.

So are you opening up for business?

Raymonda, I am in the same quandry with a DR-6 and a pair of DR-9s that need service. Through the B&W site you can download the service manuals for all the products under the B&W canopy. I'll advise if/when I find a qualified repair solution. Please reciprocate.

Onward, Tom Thiel

Teo
schematics often show useful calibration and test voltages. Protection circuits can also be tricky 
classe can supply diagrams on requests