TAP Electronics

Honestly, during this pandemic, it can be very possible that the parts supply chain has broken down. I’m sure during normal times things would have gone a lot smoother. Of course I can relate to the money & music comments as I was a professional musician long before I got into electronics. It gets harder & harder to make things work as you age. I’m 68 yrs old now & the finances are really bad for me as well.

The shipping back costs are normal. Even when I purchased a guitar online, I had to pay shipping to return it, that’s pretty standard in the business world. I really don’t think he’s intentionally trying to screw you out of money. It’s seems he’s trying to retain your business while covering for Tascam. It’s a tough situation for both of you.

Sometimes it takes me a couple of months to get a product out the door depending on the parts required & the workload in the shop. It gets really interesting when after you order parts, you find yet another problem with the product that wasn’t apparent because you couldn’t even get the unit to power up. We have all kinds of clauses in our service agreements to protect ourselves in cases like these. We also charge flat fees for repairs that must be paid up-front before we will even attempt a repair. Then, sometimes the quotes go up because of additional problems found.

The audio business is a rough business to be in. I can’t tell you how many times I was stiffed by large companies when I was on my own. Every one of them wanted tax information from me before they would pay me. I’ve also worked for some pretty famous people that thought I was on some sort of 90 day billing cycle when I was functioning as a independent contractor. I had to dump all those types of customers & only worked for people that would pay me when the work was completed.

I really wish you luck with the repair. If you’re communicating with the repair shop easily now, I would advise you to wait a bit longer. I know it’s frustrating to wait for a repair, but you may be pleased with the results. Sometimes telling a repair shop what parts you want fixed can be a problem. They want to give you back a working product & if they decide to let’s say, replace a often failing part such as a line amp, they’re doing you a favor & protecting themselves from a returned repair.
 
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I see I missed a couple of your questions. Reel to reel is an expensive proposition. Tape is pretty expensive & then you have the expense of some sort of mixer. You get what you pay for. I had a really nice 1” 16 track but the cost of tape made me sell it about 10 yrs ago. I cut corners wherever I can & re-purpose just about everything.

I was able to buy a 12 core Mac Pro from a post production company that was going out of business. I only paid $1k for it. I maxed out the RAM & installed a couple of SSD’s & HDD’s, then I bought an 8 channel Apollo interface & wired up a patch bay. It all runs very smoothly. IMHO, it’s the way to go these days. My total investment was somewhere about $3k. I already had some monitors & mics.

I’ll always love tape and the old way of recording but this setup is cheap & dependable. You can always get a fast PC & run Reaper. it’s only $60. It took me about 7 years to get all this stuff together. Home recording these days is pretty amazing & has never been cheaper. I’m really glad I put all this stuff together before I retired. Now it’s just a few days a week in the repair shop. The rest of the time, I enjoy making music.

If you’re not a computer person, maybe consider one of the new Tascam digital Portastudios. There are a few companies that make these all in one studios. The best thing is all of them have no moving parts to wear out & the SD cards they record on are pretty cheap these days.
 
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Ladewd, regarding the service industry? 'Twas ever thus.

You are 68 so if you were in electronics repair 40 odd years ago you will know that Joe Public was about the same back then. "They want it tomorrow (better this afternoon!) and they want it cheap".

Getting spares from major companies in UK was not difficult as a rule but it did take time "28day delivery" was not uncommon. Yes, some enterprising bods like SEME and Charlie Hyde started up and serviced the radio and TV trade very well. RS Components were always fast but moved more into 'industrial' and away from domestic spares.
But as firms were taken over by bigger conglomerates the 'bean counters' saw 'service' as something to pare down to the absolute minimum and easy contact to Philips and Sony etc went down the pan.

Then of course the trade suffered greatly from 'Rogue Traders' (we call them "cowboys" no offence!) and it became hard for a decent, one man repair shop to make a living. "Sid down the road only charges a tenner!" "So take it to Sid then." "He says he can't fix it." "Well, when I can't fix something I only charge a fiver"

Old family firms kept large component stocks, subsidised by the mnctrs but the abolition of Retail Price Mantainence and the rise of the 'Pile 'em High, sell'em Cheap' "Magnet" type stores with stupid staff killed that off and the workshops with it.

But! We REALLY must start making stuff again that CAN be repaired at a cost that gives the tech a living. We cannot just go on as if we had a spare planet to plunder.

Dave.
 
Dave,

I guess for most of my career, I was backed by a big company. When Sony bought our company (MCI) they mistakenly purchased the company because it held the US market share of recording equipment at that time. Sony ran it into the ground. I originally worked at the factory & parts were always available to me. I would travel all over the world working on the products we manufactured. I never had to charge customers, but was on salary & simply fixed the customers machines. When I walked in, I was the good guy, there to save the day.

Then Sony decided to close the factory in Florida. They moved me out to California & trained me on all their digital machines, 48 tracks, Oxford consoles. I met all kinds of “stars” & repaired their machines. The only difference was the service department became a profit center. Instead of supporting products my company made, I was encouraged to go out there & make money for Sony. This went on for 5 years. Sony decided they we’re going to stop supporting the products parts wise. When I had to order parts on my own & not through Sony, things got tough. It was never my responsibility to start sourcing parts. It started getting so messy, I finally left Sony thinking I could do a better job by myself. That’s when I was really introduced to the poor audio community. When people who were largely successful in the business found out I was on my own, they started to call me. All of a sudden I was nickeled & dimed by every cusomter. I’m too nice of a guy & always charged folks less than the competition (Sony). All parts eventually dried up & common parts such as switches, brakes, IC’s & specialized transistors were very difficult to get. I found myself spending more time sourcing parts than repairing machines.

I know all businesses are operating like this today, which is why I got a small cushy part time job repairing mostly outboard gear that cost a lot of money. It’s a nice niche to get into during my retirement. I kind of feel like a toaster repairman in the late ‘50’s. I’m a dinosaur now. Tape is not popular any more & the only folks with machines barely have the money to pay me a solid wage. I’m not complaining, I’m simply stating facts.

I also wanted to be the voice of reason from a repair shop point of view. There aren’t that many of us left with the skills to work on these machines, particularly the digital 48 tracks. I really miss the days when all pro audio products came with manuals & schematics. That was from the days when service was not a profit center. At that time, manufacturers encouraged third party repairs to take some of the service responsibilities off their chest. These days getting a schematic or any support from manufacturers is very difficult and all companies want customers to return the products to the factory for repair. Once these companies receive the product, they simply replace it or change out major assemblies. Then they throw the bad parts in the garbage rather than fixing them. The shop I work at is certified for U/A (not interfaces) but all the older U/A and UREI products. We also repair AMS/Neve products. We gave up on Tascam & Lexicon because we couldn’t get support from the company for parts etc. we still do Eventide products simply because they not only trained us, but supported us with manual & software to diagnose & test the H3000 series of processors. You have to really tread carefully if you want to run a successful repair shop.

My current boss is a true entrepreneur. He buys old multitracks, and parts them out. He has a giant eBay store that sells all these parts & others he procured at ham radio fests etc. we design & build accessories for the AMS products, like remote etc. we have our hands in the larger pro-audio community. I get gear from folks like Joe Walsh, Mark Isham, & George Duke (when he was alive) to name a few to repair. If only I had the foresight to create a business like this for myself, but he’s already got the clients, he’s a great guy who pays me well, so I have little to complain about these days. Someone had mentioned something about incompetent techs out here in CA, so I wanted to set the record straight.

You guys can call me by my name...Cary
 
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In your video it either is not reaching the correct mechanical position and the deck goes back to default and also the right reel table in play is not moving telling me there is a drive issue there. There is simply a lack of maintenance done to this unit and it would seem that the guy who have it don't even understand this. They are making excuses and $800 estimates in hope you will tell them to keep it and then they will fix it and sell it again. I have seen this kind of thing happen.
 
They shipped it back yesterday. I don't think they are charging me for shipping, they simply have too much work, and it's hard to long distance communicate, especially through email.

Would be neat if they fixed it. I'll be sure to let you know :), it would be a Christmas miracle. But as far as I know they found that one burnt out part in the mixer board, and are too busy.
 
They shipped it back yesterday. I don't think they are charging me for shipping, they simply have too much work, and it's hard to long distance communicate, especially through email.

Would be neat if they fixed it. I'll be sure to let you know :), it would be a Christmas miracle. But as far as I know they found that one burnt out part in the mixer board, and are too busy.

Well, a result of sorts. Re the burned out print. It is often practical to cut out the whole burned section back to good board then fabricate the missing circuitry on stripboard ("Veroboard here) Lot of work mind and you need a schematic.

You are not allowed to effect such a repair here for mains carrying PCB or anything with the "!" safety mark, especially if it might be sold.

Dave.
 
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