Be realistic guys! A watchmaker friend says he gets water damaged watches in all the time. Usually they’re personal items with deeper meaning. Most are in every sense, junk. Buy a new one or a second hand one. He hates it when people say no, I want it fixed. It always means at least a few screws need drilling out, re-tapping and replacing. Some parts are too far gone for repair and need replacing. Some of these parts have to be sourced from abroad, if available. Often he has to make new parts from scratch. Others need modifying from current parts making them fit. He calls it fettling.
Then you need to look at how much labour really costs. Plumbers and electricians, the guys at the main dealer who fix your car. I’m repairing a 55 year old radio for a customer. Sentimental value. She’s in no hurry, so I have agreed to do it in my down time at a lower than normal cost, but I have spent more than the radio currently fetches on ebay so far on the parts, and that’s just the audio section so far. A few things in the RF section are not available, or will be a real bodge to make fix. So far I think three full days have been wasted on it. I’m just looking at an invoice for three days work for a live event, £720 plus 20% VAT. I feel unable to invoice a little old lady at the real price. Hence a down time rate.
nobody should be emotionally attached to a microphone, so it’s simply a business decision. For me it would be junk it, although I have always wanted to replace a decent mic’s innards with a stage pyro and video it exploding for YouTube. “hey guys, I turned phantom on and this happened….”