Classic synth repair! Can anyone recomend an Honest and reliable Tech?

[Zukan]

Panic don't do dc offsets..........Zuke Reapir Services in Bukland do.

I would have assumed you'd know that, what with all the 808 sampling you do?

[minime123]

wow, 7 years to fix a 6trak? what was the actual repair performed and what was the cost of the repair?
we service a lot of our own vintage gear here and some things need parts which just arent available or take a day to track down, so they sit and sit and sit until the parts surface or weve got a day to poke around looking for them. of course, theres no customer waiting for us.
i dont have any recommendations, but youre generally better off going to a specialist rather than trying your local general music store tech. a lot of techs will claim they can fix vintage gear but few have the experience to do it right if the problems not a simple fix.
mini

[DragonLogos]

Well yes, I can imagine (their no spares, it's easy if you try) - oppps were was I..... I can imagine getting things like 741 op amps are easy to find for a Mini Moog, but there is a nasty IC in the Moog Liberation that is out of production and if you cannot get it what can you do... grand plans of people building thick films if they could get the internal structure and so on

[oite]

To all decent people reading this forum, do NOT use The Synthesizer Service Centre in Acton to repair your beloved synths, they will not return your emails / phone calls, have had synths come back with loose screws / faults and even better they have lost one of my rare instruments along with my details, will i ever see that nice synth again..........
Having waited over 2 YEARS and after having a very strange conversation with a very rude man at their reception by phone not that long ago, it became quite clear that i was dealing with a bunch of real idiots.

Please Please not use these lot.

M.

[ramthelinefeed]

To all decent people reading this forum, do NOT use The Synthesizer Service Centre in Acton to repair your beloved synths, they will not return your emails / phone calls, have had synths come back with loose screws / faults and even better they have lost one of my rare instruments along with my details, will i ever see that nice synth again..........
Having waited over 2 YEARS and after having a very strange conversation with a very rude man at their reception by phone not that long ago, it became quite clear that i was dealing with a bunch of real idiots.

Please Please not use these lot.

M.

If you read above, you will see I advised you that they were tossers as early as 2006! But you had to go and prove me right the hard way!

[GooGoo]

I don't think Oakley Sound do repairs anymore

[fatbenelton]

Oakley don't do repairs anymore which puts more pressure on James Walker at Synth Repair Services! Probably the best around and a pleasure to deal with.....don't expect a quick turnaround though......

[Folderol]

I'm actually astonished that these cowboys can get away with such long non-service times

[Rolandforever]

To all decent people reading this forum, do NOT use The Synthesizer Service Centre in Acton to repair your beloved synths, they will not return your emails / phone calls, have had synths come back with loose screws / faults and even better they have lost one of my rare instruments along with my details, will i ever see that nice synth again..........
Having waited over 2 YEARS and after having a very strange conversation with a very rude man at their reception by phone not that long ago, it became quite clear that i was dealing with a bunch of real idiots.

Please Please not use these lot.

M.

If you read above, you will see I advised you that they were tossers as early as 2006! But you had to go and prove me right the hard way!

And more personal evidence that they are indeed tossers. I took a malfunctioning CR78 to them. To be fair they agreed to look at it immediately but said that they charge every customer a minimum of £100 + vatjust for looking at a synth/drum machine....yes....just for looking at it. So one hour later he said that he could not find a fault. I rang James Walker, as he has always looked after me (but I was in London and he in Stoke) and he said no worries send it to me and I will turn it round the same day (I've spent soooo much money with him he probably did me a favour) and he does not charge for 'looking' at a synth. Only when he knows what the problem is does he start charging. Best to check with him that this is tha case for everyone. Anyway he identified the fault within an hour and fixed it immediately. James is such a great guy and totally trustworthy. Sending stuff to him by mail is really not problem either if you package things correctly and it will cost no more than your petrol if travelling a long way.

[ken long]

Just to add to the thread:

I've had a great experience with Ron LeBar and the Hammond Hire Company. They're based in Coventry but do weekly pickups/drop offs in London.

They repaired an ailing sampler and restored it to its past glory. They are Moog/Rhodes/Hammond specialists and a lot of the stuff going into Acton ends up outsourced to them.

ken

[ken long]

This thread should be made a sticky.

[ramthelinefeed]

I have to say I am a bit ambivalent about my experiences with Ron Lebar and the Hammond Hire company.
He is clearly a rather eccentric fellow... this can be splendid thing, but in recent years his website seems full of a mixture of creationist/christian/"libertarian"/UKIP-style blether that he has penned, which I personally find somewhere between silly, tedious and downright offensive. Fixing synthesizers is one thing, but ushering in a new Age of Endarkenment is not something I'm very keen on.
On more practical terms, whilst he did in the end do very good work on the gear I left with him, fixing some very obscure undocumented stuff, it took nearly two years and I was getting zero communication most of that time, phone calls and emails not returned, and the bill at the end was enormous, many hundreds of pounds - a more professional outfit would have kept me informed of how much work would be needed and made sure I was happy to spend that much.
Basically I would be wary of using them again.

[ken long]

I don't care much for his religious beliefs if, as you said, he does a good job.

I'm sorry it took that long for you. My turnaround was one week. In fairness, I did source all the replacement parts before hand except for the capacitors.

Yes, the bill wasn't nice but worth it for the quick turnaround, IMO.

ken

[ramthelinefeed]

well the thing about his religious beliefs is that he is a member of a political party that wants to impose these beliefs on the rest of us in law -
see his page What if CMGB ran Great Britain?

As such, I think he can f*ck off and take his "restoration and strengthening" of Clause 28 with him.

[ken long]

I can see how, as a gay man, you would take offense.

I did like this bit though:

Clamping and towing away of vehicles is legalised banditry and should be outlawed. There should be a total ban on any organisation, Government, Council or private, levying ANY kind of "penalty". These are matters for Courts alone in a democracy. Pseudonyms for penalties, such as "fees" or "charges", should also be banned.

[ramthelinefeed]

Well I have to say him: Ron, if you'd stop parking on double yellow lines, they wouldn't have to tow you away in the first place, would they?

[rockmanrock]

One to avoid: W D Greenhill & Co.

They had a rack synth of mine for a year, were non-communicative and I had to pay a fair wedge to get it back, unrepaired and horribly cosmetically damaged (badly chewed metal).

Ron Lebar repaired an ESQ1 of mine some years back, did a great job and is a very interesting chap to talk synths with. I would have taken it to him but the only phone contact seems to be via the London place and I got a brusk brush-off when I told them what I'd like them to consider repairing (Kawai K3).

[Michael Cole]

Hi

I have a Korg Delta strings/synth and a Roland TR-606 Drumatix, both of which have been in storage since 1984 and now need a little attention.

There seems to be pretty unanimous agreement that James in Stoke-on-Trent is top class, but no one seems to have a good word to say about any synth repairmen in London.

So what should a Delta/Drumatix owner in London do?

Time is not a particular issue - I can easily wait six months, although perhaps not six years.

However, I obviously want the problems fixed at a reasonable cost, since my objective is to sell both machines, and I doubt that either of them is worth much more than £100-£150 in full working order.

All suggestions are welcome.

Thank you.

Michael

[fatbenelton]

Micheal _ personally I'd post them to James. INterparcel or parcel2go offer reasonable courier service and you could prob get it up to James as one parcel for less than £20-30.

As for values, you are a little out and you could probably sell them in their current state for the values you mention. Some ebay sellers in Japan are offering Delta's at £400+. I have myself been on the lookout for one and they seem to be on the up - the last few went for more than £250. Tr606's, being analogue, are sought after depsite being a little (lot!) limited: seen these going for £300+

If the Delta is fixable I may take it off you and get it to James myself...PM me if interested.

Jon

[Michael Cole]

Hi Jon

Many thanks for your advice.

I'll contact James and see what he suggests.

I'm sure the Delta is fixable. The string section works beautifully, but the synth section is temperamental.

It's in pretty good condition. I used it sparingly for a couple of years, but it's basically been stored in the original packaging since the mid-1980s.

I've posted a couple of photos on Photobucket, for anyone who is interested. Here is the URL:-

http://s778.photobucket.com/albums/yy66/michaelcole50/Korg%20Delta/

(If any gaps, spaces or hyphens appear in the above URL, as sometimes happens, please remove them before pasting into your browser.)

N.B. Although these are not shown in the photos, I also have the original Owner's Manual and plastic Dust Cover.

Michael

[fatbenelton]

Michael - PM sent

Jon

[Grandmasterbird]

Thats a shame to hear about Panic Music- I've got a Novation Supernova 2 keyboard that needs some TLC and Novation pointed me in their direction.

Apparently they are a Novation approved repair company for their old line of synths or something?

Reading the stories here puts me off sending it there to be repaired, but the alternatives seem to be few and far between.....

[Kolakube]

Wxcuse me guys if this has been mentioned but I confess I have not read the entire thread.

Unfortunatly Tony Allgood from cumbria no longer repairs synths

http://www.oakleysound.com/contact.htm

[baward]

Micheal _ personally I'd post them to James. INterparcel or parcel2go offer reasonable courier service and you could prob get it up to James as one parcel for less than £20-30.

Have you considered taking it there on the train yourself, if you can? In my opinion, its the surest and safest way of getting it to Stoke. A quick check on thetrainline.com gave me an offpeak London to Stoke single ticket price of £8.

Ben

[Kolakube]

baward,

Is James able to turn around in a day? Id have thought he'd have been snowed under.