Vintage Synth Repair

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on this discussion!  I appreciate all 
the input very much.  I'll report my findings in a few weeks, once I get 
the MS-20 on the bench and have a look.

-George


thirteentech wrote:
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> Hi Monica, I absolutely agree with you, in any vintage restoration job a re-cap is mandatory. Therein lies the difference between restoration and repair. I do both, and I always give the customer the option to land anywhere along the scale from repair only to full restoration. Any synth that comes in that I feel would really benefit from a re-cap I let the customer know, and I often end up doing it. 
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> But the other side of the coin is far more common for a synth repairer, as an example: A kid brings in a scrappy OBXa with a couple of dead voices, bad key shims, bad pots and switches, the usual. The machine is a mess, he is nervous anyway as he doesn't have much money, and in the end I have to shave the cost down anyway because I finish up fixing the issues for which he brought the machine in, but I fix a half dozen smaller problems for free because I can't have a machine going out that isn't fully functional with my name attached to it.  Do you think I would bring up the subject of a re-cap in that circumstance? Absolutely not, he would never go ahead, and now he is going to go home and start worrying about capacitors. This is what I meant by "real world" in my earlier post.
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> It's fine for purists to jump up and down saying that every old machine must be re-capped when the come in for a repair, but they might as well say that every old car on the road should have and engine and tranny re-build next time it goes in for a service. It is a nice idea, but it is just not in not people's budget. 
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> I agree that customers should be informed about old electro's, but in a service centre you soon learn to know which customers it is a waste of time discussing the matter with, so I don't. I do a lot of re-caps every year, and I enjoy doing it, but I know when not to go there too.
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