Amp technicians...

[DirtyBird]

A dying field?

 

I dont know any amp techs around here... I know of 1 in Atlanta who at least kinda knows what he's doing but beyond that it's a wildcard. I dont know one way or the other.

 

We've got a few people who could qualify as amp techs on the boards...

 

But by and large, they're fairly rare. I can think of maybe ah alf dozen people on the boards plus one or 2 people I'm aware of in real life that can actually do amp work.

 

And then you see the thread about the guy butchering the Dual Rectifier and JamesPeters made the comment about places being desperate for amp techs.

 

I'm thinking 30 years ago, they probably weren't hard to find at all, now they're pretty hard to find, so what's it gonna be like in 20 more years? Is it a dying art?

[JamesPeters]

For the amount of knowledge and skill a good amp tech is supposed to have, there are usually a lot of other things he can do and make better money (as well as possibly better work conditions). So the amp techs you get are going to be wildcards; you might get really good service, you might not...you might get the amp working properly again but not set up well for the sound you want, and so on.

On that subject, one of the smartest techs/engineers I've ever met didn't give a rat's ass about biasing output tubes (and was also known to do questionable work to "get the amp out of his shop fast" sometimes). I've redone a number of amps he'd serviced, and every time the customer thanked me profusely. These weren't even modification jobs, just basic cap and biasing jobs, sometimes selecting better tubes (or making sure they were even relatively matched at all). And I know for a fact that tech is way more knowledgeable than I am, about almost anything. He just doesn't care how amps sound, and to do good quality work that's reliable. To him it's just another work order.