Hi everyone. Thanks to @jafant for the suggestion I reached out to Music Technology in Virginia and spoke to a very helpful tech. He said they charge $120/hr for labor, plus a flat $25 fee for little stuff like diodes, resistors, and disposal cost. When I told him I was guessing $200 for caps he said that was probably a high estimate. I asked, without knowing what's wrong, if you are recapping an old amp how many hours would you spend? He said it depends on many things like point to point wiring, schematics of the amp, etcetera but figure on about average 3 hours, so $360, plus parts and return shipping. When I asked if $600-$800 was a reasonable guess he said that sounded too high...
Amp repair cost — is this right?
I recently sent my Musical Fidelity a308cr power amp off to be recapped. This amp is somewhere around 16-18 years old and one of the power caps failed. I contacted Musical Fidelity and sent it to a repair shop they recommended. Today I received an estimate to replace 18 caps, 8 of which are large power caps, resolder the boards, and re-bias the transistors. Basically a full overhaul. The quote I received, including return shipping (prob around $100) Is over $1,300 which possibly exceeds the value of the amp. That doesn’t include the $115 it cost me to ship it out. Having never had an overhaul done on a power amp like this, I’m wondering if anyone with experience can tell me if this sounds right. I guess I was expecting something more like $600-$800 but I don’t know why since I really don’t have a frame of reference. Perhaps it was the assumption it might be 4 hours labor (say $400) plus max $200 for caps. Is $1,300+ on track? Either way I’m going to be out the shipping cost plus a $160 fee paid for the estimate.
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they are snap mount medium sized garden variety 63-80v capacitors. 15kuf-20kuf each. 8 of them. About $15US each at digikey. something like this:https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/united-chemi-con/ESMH800VRT223MB80T/4002961 They are not high grade Nichicon non magnetic specialized ’found only at Parts connexion or Micheal Percy’ (or other specialty high end audio suppliers) ’super audio grade’ $50-60 each capacitors. The given shop should attach a cost, maybe 25-30% extra for the parts (some go as high as 50%), than the total cost of procuring the ’common’ parts. Money out, all of it - needs to be compensated for. But things should stay in some form/shape of reason... this concerns a repair shop, cars, electronics, etc. manufacturing is a different beast altogether. One that requires much greater ratios, in order to survive the long lists of costs and financial extensions that take place - when attempting to manufacture in such a crazy world as high end audio. Overhead is insane. |
@ atmasphere (Ralph) you say the replacement cost for the large multiple filter caps is 800 to 1200.00. Then teo_audio says 15.00 max cost per cap. Also roberjerman says these caps are quite inexpensive. 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. Charles |
Ralph uses far more expensive capacitors in his gear. Inescapably so. Much higher voltages, much lower manufacturing levels of those capacitors, thus per unit costs are much higher for a plethora of reasons., so his costs are a totally different beast. And I'll get no deeper into it than that - not my purview. |
When I pulled out the bad cap I googled for a matching replacement based on the same specs printed on the side and the measurements I took using a caliper. There were around 10 brands available and costs varied from $5 to $20 per cap. That's for the eight 10k microfarad filter capacitors. Then there about ten more little baby caps in there which I didn't check but assumed wouldn't be $20 each. |
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