Amp repair cost — is this right?

Or Music Technologies?

I used Bill Thalmann to restore a whole bunch of old components I owned for use in a second, vintage system. I dropped off all the equipment at his shop- got a tour-quite a place, packed to the gills with hi-fi, musical instruments, vintage electronic keyboards, etc. Bill did great work on a variety of equipment, from restoring an old SP-10 turntable to a vintage McI pre-tuner to a pair of ancient Quad II power amps. He helped me source some NOS tubes as well. Very nice guy, very good work, not crazy money. Just make sure you pack well. 

I just recapped an old Krell 400xi integrated amp for a friend. I replaced almost every single electrolytic cap for him.  This included about 20 surface mounts and perhaps another 50 caps including the larger power supply filtering caps.  I used common parts and the amp sounded much better after the work. Ralph at Atmasphere is spot on regarding the life of these capacitors and the sound improvement that can be realized.  

I think many of us forget, not Ralph, how long it takes to just disassemble the amp to get at the underside of the boards etc... With this Krell it was not easy or fast. Just disassembly and desoldering/cleaning took 3-4 hours.  Some units are ridiculously hard to work on due to the time and hassle of disassembly and re-assembly. Goodness many companies make it so hard. 

In addition, it takes time to properly desolder all the old parts plus clean the boards for the replacement parts.  This can be more time consuming when space is tight and you do a clean and professional job. 

Replacing  electrolytic caps can be an hour job with an amp that is simple to disassemble with just a handful of large caps being attended to. However,  with other amps this can take many hours....up to 6-8.  

 Not sure about this amp as I never worked on one, but just giving some realities for us to consider. 

Are you all referring to the ’same’ capacitors? Such a vast cost spectrum being cited. Ralph you build and repair audio electronics and would know. Just curious as to the wide variance of price.

Apparently not! Snap caps are a *lot* less expensive! They are a little harder to remove but not so much that the labor is significantly affected. So this really does suggest that $1300 or so is too high. I would expect to pay at a retail price about $15-24.00 each for those snap caps (assuming a service department that has enough fair markup to actually stay in business; Digi-Key prices are wholesale); that puts the overall repair price realistically more in the $400-$600 range.

As above, good to read that Bill and Corey are alive and well doing Audio business.  I have only spoken to Bill via phone.  He is highly regarded in this community.
Happy Listening!