Re: what kills Look cleats?

> With regard to consumer electronics, I go to a shop with
> an old school artisan.
>
> In the last two years I had three repairs. Repaired a 15
> year old television. Power supply, feedback loop, two
> components failed; one transistor that reads the power and
> modulates the oscillator. The first just went wide open
> and fried the second. Artisan tracked down the real
> problem. This TV is a beauty.

The TV I built in... 1980?... a Heathkit... was still doing fine through
last year, but the picture tube was slowly dying and it wouldn't converge or
focus very well anymore. The cost of a new picture tube is much too high,
given the age of the set, and rejuvenation on a 20+ year old picture tube
isn't a long-term fix. So, sadly, it's now a stand for a new widescreen TV
that probably won't last more than 6 or 7 years.

> The owner told me that that manufacturer is not making
> televisions anything like as good as mine. That one
> customer bought a new television, then two months later
> replaced it with the one in the basement it originally
> replaced. Same manufacturer as mine. One point he made is
> that automatic color control has been sacrificed.

It costs a lot more to make something easily repairable. Remember the old
Quasar "works in a drawer" TVs? Well, maybe you're not old enough. But they
had a totally-modular design, very similar to what Heathkit was doing. Lots
of individual printed circuit boards that plugged into the main chassis.
Ironically, I think it was improved reliability that killed off improved
repairability. But now, in our never-ending quest to find the bottom
(cheaper prices at any cost), we have neither.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


"Michael Press" <jack@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:jack-7D5846.22391930012006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article
> <s9CDf.48444$PL5.40072@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> "Mike Jacoubowsky" <mikej1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> > Much of Europe seems driven by a different imperative than the US;
>> > here, thrift and craftsmanship are denigrated in favor of profit. The
>> > fact that a tube is repairable is irrelevant; the shop doesn't do
>> > anything that doesn't make money for the owner *today*, and then they
>> > wonder why they're all sitting around waiting for work to come in next
>> > week. OTOH, in many locales, it's hard to strike a balance between
>> > charging enough to keep the doors open but not so much that the
>> > customers feel as though their intelligence has been insulted.
>>
>> That's a generalization that sounds good but is usually not even close to
>> the truth. The reason we (and most other shops as well) don't patch tubes
>> is
>> because A:) The customer rarely sees the value in it, since the price
>> would
>> be so close to a new one, and, more importantly, B:) The shop gets blamed
>> when they run over something else, because the customer invariably claims
>> that the problem is with the patch job, or that we didn't catch the
>> second
>> hole.
>>
>> I, for one, would much rather repair things than replace them, when
>> practical. But it's not always the business owner who determines whether
>> something is practical or not; more often, it's the customer. And it's
>> not
>> the bike shop where the customer learns that product is disposable...
>> repair
>> pricing for just about any consumer electronics item is so high relative
>> to
>> the cost of buying a new one that rarely does it make sense to repair.
>> Nor
>> is it the bike shop where customers learn that it's OK to toss a CO2
>> cartridge by the side of the road after using it.
>
> With regard to consumer electronics, I go to a shop with
> an old school artisan.
>
> In the last two years I had three repairs. Repaired a 15
> year old television. Power supply, feedback loop, two
> components failed; one transistor that reads the power and
> modulates the oscillator. The first just went wide open
> and fried the second. Artisan tracked down the real
> problem. This TV is a beauty.
>
> The owner told me that that manufacturer is not making
> televisions anything like as good as mine. That one
> customer bought a new television, then two months later
> replaced it with the one in the basement it originally
> replaced. Same manufacturer as mine. One point he made is
> that automatic color control has been sacrificed.
>
> I had repaired twice a fifteen year old VCR that I like.
> Once for the tape transport, once for the power supply.
>
> All money well spent.
>
> Shameless plug: Eid's in Berkeley, California.
>
> --
> Michael Press


.

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