Amp repair pricing

ruralfrance

Just been quoted £45 an hour for amp troubleshooting/repair.

Does that sound fair/high/low?

robinbowes

Sounds about right to me. Depends on competence to a large degree. I used to drive 100 miles to get my various worked on because the guy knew what he was doing and knew most issues inside out and fixed them fast. Same applies to amps.

martinw

I charge £40 an hour.

ICBM

martinw said:

I charge £40 an hour.

Same here.

£45/hr is fine, especially if that's via a shop where they will probably add on a small admin charge etc.

ruralfrance

Smashing. The guy has 30 years experience, is local and will collect and drop off so sounds like a good deal to me. Thanks all.

Sassafras

An expert can get a surprising amount of work done in an hour.

ecc83

Always tricky to presume about another man's livelihood. I can only off what a friend of mine did in the TV/VCR trade (although he would tackle most other things including amps. I got those) .

Firstly he had a non returnable deposit. 20yrs ago it was 15quid, today I would say £25 at least. This stopped time wasters and junk from stuffing up the workshop.

Charge was about £25 plus parts iirc flat fee, no hourly rate* . He did however give himself the option of working on a "time and materials" basis for odd jobs, unknown products ot stuff that had been messed about with although the latter was almost always bounced back, invariably too much hassle. He had the option if thing got sticky to give back the deposit and say "never darken my door......"!

*This avoided the problem of "cost comparisons" In a relatively small town people would talk in the pub and would feel ripped off it a product's repair cost was greatly different for the apparently same fault. "We" know of course that "dead" can mean almost anything! All repair techs know that some jobs go easily and quickly yet other faults, especially intermittent ones, can take hour even days to sort and you simply cannot charge the time in the latter cases. Swings and roundabouts.

Lastly, anyone thinking of going into the repair business would do well to study consumer law especially that relating to Uncollected Goods!

Dave.

gordiji

It sounds ok for france where in my experience most services are more expensive than uk. Out of interest whereabouts are you ?

Cabicular

It sounds fair to me
I use the services of ICBM for my amp needs and I've always found him to be thorough and very reasonably priced. He worked on the best part of 3 grands worth of amps for me so the cost of getting them back on the road was tiny compared to the value of the amps themselves.
I would always say trust is more important than per hour cost so as long as he is in the ballpark it should be about how much faith you have in him

I'm funny about amplifiers ... More so than guitars. Generally a badly done set up is less likely to kill you onstage ...

jpfamps

I charge £44 / hour + parts.

Mkjackary

Does anyone here tip for amp repairs?

Cabicular

Lol no but if someone goes out of their way I try to make sure they aren't out of pocket

Danny1969

I charge £30 an hour labour plus parts. It's not enough really when there's the workshop to pay for, the tools and other expenses before you pay yourself a bean 

Van_Hayden

Sassafras;984992" said:

An expert can get a surprising amount of work done in an hour.

Unless it's an SVT and an hour is about what it takes to get the bloody thing out of its box....

ICBM

... adding fifteen minutes for every time you trap your fingers under the chassis and need to stick them in a glass of ice water .

Actually they're not too bad when you've worked out the routine. It's still a good five minute job though - and a lot of heavy lifting.

Van_Hayden

I know - I just don't like 'em. Them and AC30s.