If you don't open it up, you certainly don't know what is wrong, modified or no. He says he's got enough work to keep him busy...cool and dandy, he can easily afford to reject units that have been modified (or sprayed, lol!).
When I was a wet-bench tech, these $3-Mil+ benches often had 100+ pages of wiring, PLC logic, controller, and robotics wiring prints, and another 30 to 40 pages of field modifications, often poorly documented. Dealing with mods has been a fact of life for the equipment I have made my living with for my entire career. I can generally handle a few amplifier faux pau's.
WRT audio equipment, I have had people bring stuff to me for years that others refused to work on for something as benign as changing out a bulb to a different voltage 'cause the original was no longer available, so I'm not unfamiliar with the mindset. Indeed, if Soundsmith wants to offer a 1 year warranty on repairs, then their 'no mods' policy is perhaps wise. Leaves more for the rest of us. I also suspect that there are hundreds of great repair places in the NE that simply haven't spent a great deal of money and time putting together a pretty website...if you are supposing that it takes a tech with 30 years of experiance to work on an amplifier, well it doesn't hurt, but I know a high-school kid down the block who built his own ham radio at 12, and is working on a patent for a new style of switched-supply audio amplifier.
Good and bad techs are everywhere. I'd find it hard to believe that any one part of the country has a monopoly on one or the other. If you need some work done, ask around, talk to friends, pop open the Yellow Pages and talk to a few. There's no real black magic in fixing audio gear, despite what some might have you believe. Find someone who is friendly, charges reasonable rates, and isn't going to take 6 months to do the job.
...oh, and it's nice if they don't mind opening up a unit that has had a bulb changed or sprayed with (God forbid) Caig.
When I was a wet-bench tech, these $3-Mil+ benches often had 100+ pages of wiring, PLC logic, controller, and robotics wiring prints, and another 30 to 40 pages of field modifications, often poorly documented. Dealing with mods has been a fact of life for the equipment I have made my living with for my entire career. I can generally handle a few amplifier faux pau's.
WRT audio equipment, I have had people bring stuff to me for years that others refused to work on for something as benign as changing out a bulb to a different voltage 'cause the original was no longer available, so I'm not unfamiliar with the mindset. Indeed, if Soundsmith wants to offer a 1 year warranty on repairs, then their 'no mods' policy is perhaps wise. Leaves more for the rest of us. I also suspect that there are hundreds of great repair places in the NE that simply haven't spent a great deal of money and time putting together a pretty website...if you are supposing that it takes a tech with 30 years of experiance to work on an amplifier, well it doesn't hurt, but I know a high-school kid down the block who built his own ham radio at 12, and is working on a patent for a new style of switched-supply audio amplifier.
Good and bad techs are everywhere. I'd find it hard to believe that any one part of the country has a monopoly on one or the other. If you need some work done, ask around, talk to friends, pop open the Yellow Pages and talk to a few. There's no real black magic in fixing audio gear, despite what some might have you believe. Find someone who is friendly, charges reasonable rates, and isn't going to take 6 months to do the job.
...oh, and it's nice if they don't mind opening up a unit that has had a bulb changed or sprayed with (God forbid) Caig.
