Amp repair cost — is this right?

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!

Music Technology does terrific work and they are fair when it comes to pricing.  That is not to say that the shop that did the original appraisal is overpriced or otherwise not a wise choice.  At this juncture, that shop is the only one that really knows the scope of the work involved, so any other appraisal offered here is closer to a guess than anything else.

If you go with Music Technology, the one sort of downside is that they are pretty busy and may not be the quickest alternative out there.  They are good, but, that is no secret, which is why they are busy.

It would seem fair to me....I sent out my working Ayre amp to Ayre...  was checked....new this and that (don’t remember the parts)....1250.00

@grannyring @atmasphere @teo_audio - thank you for the direct experiential feedback and thanks to everyone else for what turned out to be a FAR more lively discussion than I ever imagined when I posed the question!

At this point my plan is to contact the original repair shop and ask a few more detailed questions about what they are doing. All I got on the phone was "replace all the caps, re-bias the amp, re-solder the board, $1,340." If it sounds somewhat close to reasonable I will proceed. Otherwise I think just based on the great interaction I had with Music Technology, I'd rather get it back and send it to them even if it's not going to save me money given what I've already sunk so far.

Hindsight being 20/20 I should have asked for repair shop recommendations first, but I did some forum searching and found a couple of (old) recommendations for the shop where it is now, then Musical Fidelity themselves recommended them too, so I went with it. I've only ever had one other amp repaired (not for caps) and unfortunately the gentleman who did it (great work and very reasonable) was a one man operation and passed away several years ago.