Emotiva Repair

You've gotta be shitting me,Emotiva refuses to repair their own recent top of the line amplifiers ? When Bob Carver joined forces with Emotiva with the intent of building a reference line I went balls deep into Emotiva since it's so economical,I bought a pair of XPR-1 Monoblocks as well as 2 of the XPR-2 two channel amps ,I bought them with the promise from Emotiva corporate owner Lonnie's words where he promised Emotiva & Carver would be " soon " releasing a complete line of reference tube gear ,I waited with $7,000 worth of amps sitting in a closet for 3 years until Lonnie at Emotiva announced the partnership with Carver was done & no Emotiva tube gear would be coming out .

I'm calling Lonnie at Emotiva tomorrow and asking him WTF he's thinking because the company is gonna start getting thrashed in the forums for not honoring the repairs of their most expensive reference line in company history ,looks like me buying a used Emotiva XPR-5 is completely out of the question ,it's a good thing I bought an Extra XPR-2 that I can use as a parts donor amp if needed .

It's a matter of perspective.  I know it really sucks that all the Emotiva XPR owners out there are pretty much stuck if something goes wrong with their amp, but I can sort of understand the business model of Emotiva.  Emotiva is almost a "flavor of the year" or "flavor of the 4 years" model where they CHEAPLY manufacturer and sell "extremely good for the money" products to consumers.  They will support a product for a number of years, with excellent support I might add.  But in all eventuality, they will discontinue products and support as their new products and business model evolves.  I have spoken to Emotiva support and they definitely had problems and cost issues with supporting the extremely heavy XPR series because none of their customers wanted to ship freight (like they recommend), so the amps typically arrived bashed up from really bad UPS handling.  That and nobody their really wants to work on XPRs because it's a pain in the freakin @#$#$ to work on (I can attest because I am rebuilding several XPRs).  The typical method of repair is to basically replace entire boards/assemblies instead of doing spot repairs because the cost of 3 hours diagnostic labor is much more than just slapping in a brand new board (because the cost of the internal parts are so low).  It's a different business model.

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On the other side of the fence, try getting support for repair of consumer electronics like Sony, Panasonic, etc.  They usually treat these as disposable items and refuse to repair them (even under warranty in some cases I have heard).  At least Emotiva will support their equipment very well through the life of the product.  That being said, Emotiva is not a Krell or Bryston or ARC.  ARC will support and repair their products, even if it's 30 years old!   But you're also paying $10k to $30k for equipment instead of the sub-$2k Emotiva.  Krell will still support old equipment, but it will cost you an arm and a leg.

To bump the question that started this thread, does anybody know of anyone who can repair an Emotiva amplifier??? I, too, have an amp in need of service that Emotiva won’t repair

The XPR amp line was a misstep by Emotiva (besides Carver, Sherbourne and the UMC-1 disaster).

The XPR line was too heavy, needed 20 amp outlets and was obviously done without much in the way of market research. They’d dream up an idea, then get their Chinese partner/factory to build so many at a certain unit price so they could ship them to Franklin and still make their margin.

But most of the time they’d end up deeply discounting them in an attempt to get ‘em out the door. The discounts ate their profits and conditioned their customers to wait for the next sale, a vicious circle.

i think they finally hired someone with a retail background, judging by their smarter moves these days.

PS, if you need an Emotiva amp repaired by someone other than Emotiva, you’re just going to have to google electronics repair in your closest cities.

 Then google the establishments for customer satisfaction and whether the BBB gives them a good rating.  These places can have a long turn around time.

The Emotiva amps aren’t exactly rocket science to figure out, although I expect that service documents will be non existent.  They don’t use boutique brands for parts, so shouldn’t be hard for a repair facility to source.