Amp repair cost — is this right?

This is 3-4 hours tops for someone experienced with the equipment and product knowledge. For someone who is not it could be 8 hours though with the right equipment I have no idea how I would spend 8 hours replacing 18 caps. Setting bias takes minutes and you work on something else while it is warming up.  Desoldering a cap, cleaning the holes, and resoldering should be a few minutes per cap. Assembly and disassembly time and overhead for parts ordering packing and unpacking must be considered.

Equivalent or given today's parts better components as pointed out is a few hundred dollars at best.

There is overhead for parts and also overhead costs in case they break it. $800 is reasonable, $1300 isn't. That sounds like a premium price for someone to "figure it out".

Get a second opinion. I've been very happy with HiFi Heaven in Falls Church, VA.

This is why I am very selective in the work I take in, and who I will perform work for. I initially got into doing audio repair as a way to save $$, keep my gear going, maybe pick up nice vintage gear that works otherwise but needs some level of overhaul, or repair to get it going/sounding great again. That morphed into taking in R2R decks, cassette decks, amps, tuners, recaps, calibrations, Setting up tonearms/turntables/cartridges, re-coning speakers.

Far too many Monday Morning Quarterback's in the audio forums today who know it all. How many here have 10K ( very conservatively speaking) invested in a completely equipped test bench, hot air de-soldering station, separate regular soldering, station, dummy loads, regulated & isolated power supplies,  the myriad of other hand or test tools that go with doing quality work? How about keeping parts in stock, resistors, diodes, transistors, bulbs, LED's the common part number semi's, capacitors?  What's that you say..?.. just order everything piecemeal  as needed from Mouser or Digi key, while gear and customers not so patiently wait, things pile, up, angry demanding owners email, text and blow up the phone?

How about experience, does that count for anything? Basic shop supplies, computers, genuine schematics?  ( don't get me going about doing quality work with freebees from HiFi-Engine)

Large filter caps are expensive, When you get to the larger main caps 40-60K microfarad 63 and 80v, 50$ + each wholesale. For the better quality low leakage high ESR, high current 105C long life caps are even bigger bucks. Oh you want Nichicon Fine Gold, Wima precision Film, Cornell Dubilier Axial electro's for vintage gear, big bucks. Plus the time to look the proper replacement or upgraded parts up. Then there is diagnostic time, cleaning, labor, taxes. Pulling each board to deep clean, reflowing 100's of solder joints, It all adds up.

Only you can decide what is fair to pay . Don't like the shop's price, shop around more, do your research before committing to shipping a unit to one shop. Then if you don't like their price or the services,  you are not stuck with paying their price, or sending it somewhere else on your dime. If you like the amp, plan to keep it forever, (how ever long that is depends on you) expect high quality parts to be used,  as well as workmanship, by someone who will be there tomorrow to back it up, expect to pay for it. 

In my experience, replacing a failed cap and recapping the rest of an amp is rarely ever that cut and dry. What caused the cap(s) to fail in the first place? Age, another component or hidden issue within the unit? Who pays to locate that? What if its more involved than estimated, who eats that?  Things are almost as never as cut and dry in reality as they are described on the forums where all the experts reside. If they were, everyone would be able to repair their own gear, no need to pay someone else to do it.

With so many so-called experts here, I'm surprised someone couldn't offer to pay YOU for the privilege of recapping your amp, or at least do it for you for free.

$10K? !! 


My UBER driver has 2-3x that invested in his business for a point of perspective. I hope you have IR on that hot air reflow. $10K is also about $3K/yr. in tax write-off, another perspective to be weighed against a full time repair shop with 6 figure billing.


Digikey ships out at 6pm Pacific and it is there by noon the next day.  Odds are you don't have all those large electrolytic capacitors in stock so you were going to be ordering any way. Typical turnaround on repair is 1-2 weeks on electronics, so the 1 day turn on parts should not be an issue and customers understand parts need to be ordered.


The op stated 18 capacitors replaced, it appears some touch up of solder joints, though that could just be resoldering the capacitors.  Not good to just randomly resolder joints. That can create more problems than it solves. 


The op already paid a $160 estimate fee to locate the problem.  It is the manufacturer recommended service location, hence they have access to the manufacturer for schematics and other service information.


The approximately size of the capacitors was noted above and only some of them are large, and they are not 40-60,000uF, they are smaller and as noted the total cost is likely in the $200 range.


None of what you said negates that for someone skilled with the right tools, and the manufacturers recommended shop, so they should not be guessing, but just doing the work, that this is a 3-4 hour job, plus overhead for parts sourcing, packing, unpacking, admin overhead, etc.