They delight in knowing what’s happening inside an amp by the way the power indicator light flickers and investigating other Sherlock Holmes-ian clues.Īnd here’s the issue: that same kind of technical insight, electronics savvy and detective’s eye for what electrons are doing makes them really valuable for other things, too. The actual repair is often anticlimactic, as it can only take so long to replace a burned-out component. You have to be able to take a cryptic, “It sounds like there’s a mouse in the tone control,” or an incomplete, “It just quit on me!” description of the amp’s problem, then translate that into some questions to try to get a dialog flowing, like, “Did you hear a hissing sound when it quit?” and from there take a few measurements and get to the real problem – “Ah-ha! A burned screen resistor!” – in a hurry. Solving the little technical mysteries of defective amps is a talent. The pseudo-techs, on the other hand, don’t have too much trouble with supporting themselves. In many cases they have a really hard time keeping up with a mortgage and doing the things that other adults like to do, like supporting a family, a house, a car and a dog all at the same time. In spite of the conventional wisdom that it costs a fortune to fix an amp, these guys are not driving luxury cars and they don’t wear designer clothes. These misguided souls think they know how to fix amps, but they generally end up doing some non-standard things to amplifiers that make for laughter and extra income for the real techs.īut I noticed something about the amp wizards.

I also know a few of what I call pseudo techs. I’ve had the good fortune to associate with, receive wisdom from, and get to know some great amp techs. There seem to be two major questions about amp repair: why is amp repair so expensive and why are good amp techs so hard to find?

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