Woo equipment repair ethics

[David Aurora]

Having been involved in a way less unscrupulous and less entangled (and definitely less colourful :-) ) incidents many years ago, and coming across many others in that time, I make the following to cautions -
You don't want your reputation getting around in that "community" that you are the go-to guy / expert / "believer" ! Having stuff like that stuck to you, irrespective on how small / irrelevant the "group" is, may not be good in your future. You can't control what people say / spread around.
When the "scammers', who make that shit, find out that you are "servicing" their gear, and they're losing NEW sales, it may elicit a possible bad "reputation". I have run into this scenario many times, and that is with poorly made cr@p that sort of worked, but was cheaply built etc etc and seriously over-priced. The HIQ audio game was the most common. Even had MANY death threats in long ago years past ... but I was younger and didn't give a rats :-) oddly enough, I got off on them :-)
Not trying to scare you, or anything like that, just passing on cautions.

On more than one occasion I've put the manufacturer on blast when I've confirmed dickishness on their part, now you've got me paranoid I might open my mail and find a negatively charged crystal 

[David Aurora]

At least he's not Carlson who peddles cap shotgunning for relatively modern solid-state gear with ICs and touts his super secret voodoo circuits you have to pay to see...even though we've discussed here before they aren't that special.

I really don't get the Carlson hate I see on forums 

I've always liked his vids, and when he started doing the Patreon thing I was happy to throw a buck or two a month in there to see what's going on. It's been a while since anything in there was up my alley, but hey, it's less than a cup of coffee and the dude pumps an enormous amount of time into high quality content so I'm happy to support it. I've definitely had a few lightbulb moments watching his vids over the years

[El Rubio]

10 bucks says the lady with the “There’s a full blown, Pete Evans level bullshit, LED covered, LASER firing shit show paddle thing with a built in piezo blasting “frequencies” smells like patchouli.

[Shock]

To prevent her from returning just start overcharging for "complicated" repairs. If she still accepts it no matter what take the extra money and buy an E-meter and align your thetan carrier waves or get drunk.

[james_s]

I really don't get the Carlson hate I see on forums 

I've always liked his vids, and when he started doing the Patreon thing I was happy to throw a buck or two a month in there to see what's going on. It's been a while since anything in there was up my alley, but hey, it's less than a cup of coffee and the dude pumps an enormous amount of time into high quality content so I'm happy to support it. I've definitely had a few lightbulb moments watching his vids over the years

There's always gonna be someone hating on anyone who has achieved some degree of success, there's gotta be people hating on Dave on some forum somewhere.

I've learned quite a bit from the Carlson videos too. I built a couple of his TDR gadgets, I didn't have the design files but the schematic was shown in the video so I laid out a board myself, it's been a really handy accessory for my scope.

[Cyberdragon]

I really don't get the Carlson hate I see on forums 

I've always liked his vids, and when he started doing the Patreon thing I was happy to throw a buck or two a month in there to see what's going on. It's been a while since anything in there was up my alley, but hey, it's less than a cup of coffee and the dude pumps an enormous amount of time into high quality content so I'm happy to support it. I've definitely had a few lightbulb moments watching his vids over the years

There's always gonna be someone hating on anyone who has achieved some degree of success, there's gotta be people hating on Dave on some forum somewhere.

I've learned quite a bit from the Carlson videos too. I built a couple of his TDR gadgets, I didn't have the design files but the schematic was shown in the video so I laid out a board myself, it's been a really handy accessory for my scope.

He's smart and educational, especially when it comes to tube stuff, but there's a point when he's just an absolute snob every once in a while.

I mean who else here is would disassemble that entire solid state receiver just to replace every single electrolytic...because reasons (not specified).

[james_s]

He's smart and educational, especially when it comes to tube stuff, but there's a point when he's just an absolute snob every once in a while.

I mean who else here is would disassemble that entire solid state receiver just to replace every single electrolytic...because reasons (not specified).

I suspect it's largely down to his expertise with tube stuff. When I work on tube gear I normally replace all of the electrolytic and wax paper capacitors because they almost always are bad. With solid state stuff that's much less often the case but I can see how someone who has mostly worked on tube gear would be in the habit.

[Haenk]

I mean who else here is would disassemble that entire solid state receiver just to replace every single electrolytic...because reasons (not specified).

It's rather a way of making sure it will run for another 20 years without having to debug it over and over again with a rising rate of failure on the parts. Just replacing all of the parts at once is less time consuming, considering how much time it takes jsut to disassemble and reassemble a complex unit. Imagine doing that every other year, just because one of the 10 cent caps dried up a bit too much. Of course that would only make sense for valuable items or items you want to Keep in service.
(And I guess you do something similar to your car, too - even if the oil or spark plugs still are technically "good enough for now", they do get replaced on a regular base…)

[CCitizenTO]

Meh... I'll be honest if the sum of the repair is the blinking LED has broken off and/or the wire to it came loose because some dumbass didn't solder it properly. Just solder the wire back into place and tell them it's fixed and charge them like $10 or something.