rob Brandt
Active Member
I live in Saint Paul--it's not a mansion, but it's large enough and my neighbors are long used (27 years) to loud music emanating from my house--especially when the Imperial 9's are being used in tri amp mode.
recommendations for local shops that would work on tube amps
For what it's worth... I didn't have a good experience with Dave at HiFi Sound. I wouldn't go back to him, based on my experience. He was 'snooty', and kind of looked down on my turntable. But, he agreed to work on it to fix a speed fluctuation problem. It's a vintage JVC VL8 in mint condition. He ended up charging me $200 for the work, and didn't fix it. I took it to Elite Service in Eau Claire instead. They actually took time to troubleshoot the issue, and replaced caps and transistors in the power supply control board. Cost me $80 and it's still working fine three years later. That's my experience... YMMV.
And, by the way, as I said he looked down on it and made me feel it's worthless. Now that it's back in working condition, I will put it up against any turntable under $4k. It sounds fantastic, was originally part of JVC's "studio" line, and certainly does not deserve his disdain.
Apparently you 2 just didn't hit it off for whatever reason and it happens. I've met Dave on several occasions, albeit not very talkative I never got attitude from him. As for being charged for repairs that didn't fix the problem is a valid complaint. However, when you initially encountered "tude" you could of simply gathered your items and gone out the front door. After all it's your money that allows businesses to keep doing business.
Thanks for the service review anyway but after 3 years things have changed there. HiFi Sound farms the majority of their repairs out to other qualified repair people in the Metro area as Dave has pretty much retired to one day a week and only services previous customer's items. I got that info from one of the repair places HiFi Sound sends their stuff to and have seen the repair tickets attached to the items on his bench. I would take my ARC equipment to this guy even though ARC is located 20 minutes from me and in your back yard.
With that being said I can think of many other places around here I wouldn't trust to repair a toaster....
Rob, I've heard good things about Absolute Sound in Savage. I haven't taken any gear there but the owner seems nice. I've chatted with him on Steve Hoffman's hardware forum. So far I haven't found something I couldn't fix myself.
I was thinking that. I can tell you as the owner of two 250's and two 240's they are actually very stable--once recapped and any resistors replaced that need to be. I have been running three of them in an actively tri-amped set up for years now--simply beautiful to listen to.i'm rebuilding a dead 250 right now and it is similar to your 240. these are kind of tricky and some say unstable from the factory. the guys over on the marantz manufacturer's sub forum are great and can offer help if you want to do it yourself.
Vinyl Giant has "a guy" they supposedly get vintage stuff repaired by. I'm also getting to the point where I can service at least some stuff, but am still somewhat an amateur.Hey @Nixxuz , I am in Fargo and have a random question for you. Do you know anyone in the area who does repair work? I have a Pioneer SA-8500ii that needs to be serviced and I’m hoping to find someone local...