Thread: tweeter, speaker repair, and bs attitudes...

The cummulative effect of TV and now the computer on society is telling.

" the fact that I was ready to pay
cold hard cash & I knew what I wanted, but they just tried to twist the wrong person & lost a sale."

Grrr. I tried to purchase a leather jacket
from Vanson, an american company. I paid
cash up front. They simply could not deliver
the goods.

Finally got my money back.

What the heck is this country coming to? Folks
are lined up with cash in hand, and they *still*
manage to FUBAR the deal.

I bought a nice desktop for SWMBO from Lenovo
for three hundred bucks. One call, they seemed
to have the entire outfit well-run and under
control. They sent me the tracking information
as soon as the sale went through, and the
machine showed up at the appointed hour.

Jim

Jim,

I was so mad @ the way the Dell rep treated me so I said f!@#$ it I will build a computer my self. That is what the good old USA is coming too. I have all the parts on order from five different sources & to quote my grandfather he always told me "if you want to do it right just do it yourself" Damm, that sure is true.

as a metal worker, i'm more than happy to share
my secrets and advice to others. welding,machining,
fab work....whatever... i don't get it why these
pricks are so secretive.

Ever wonder why plumbers can get $130 an hour and machine shops with $5,000,000 in equipment are lucky to get $50 an hour?

The truth is your speaker guy, although probably a little bit of a prick anyway as most audio store punks I have met are, is none the less in business to make money. Selling you a $3 repair kit is not worth his time, and will not put food on his table and feed his family. Selling you a $3 kit then charging you $50 to put it in is how he earns his living.

Sorry to say but not selling you that kit is just good business sense for him. The only time do-it-yourselfers make guys like him money is when they totally screw it up and make it 10 times harder to fix, which is quite often really.

I have repaired ripped cones with clear fingernail polish. I have repaired worn surronds with glue and fabric softener sheets. Now that I know I would buy a new surround next time! Funny the things you learn on a "machinist's" forum.

This is amazingly like some of the rants I have in my head with all of my other personalities...
I have never had any difficulty with Dell as a service/sales organization, but my ordering has typically been online recently with a credit card. They handle that kind of thing very well, and little or no personal involvement is required, even for a customized configuration. I'm not sure why using "cold hard cash" (whatever that means) would be a problem, unless you were planning to mail them an envelope full of 20-dollar bills.
I used to work in speaker manufacturing as well, in the late 80s (Cambridge Soundworks), and it is true, the comparison of initial manufacturing cost to repair cost is pretty lopsided...

absolutely... it could've been an unshielded
coat hanger wire or a whale's penis... and the cable would've still worked!

It would have worked, yes, but that's probably not the cable companies major concern. Turns out, they are worried about RF leakage. I ran most of the cable in my house - all good quality Belden coax, but older - late 70's early 80's. Cable guy comes out and tells me I have to replace the cable inside my house because it's leaking too much RF. I wouldn't think there would be enough power to create much of an RFI problem. He told me that it can interfere with police/fire radios so it has to be corrected. I asked if they got complaints from the local PD about my house. He said no, it probably wasn't bothering them even though my leakage was really high, it was to comply with FCC regs. He explained that they inject a specific test frequency into the cable. Periodically, they actually overfly their service territory looking for any leakage 'hot spots', then he gets sent to locate and correct the problem. He uses what amounts to a field strength meter tuned to their test freq. to locate the source of the leakage. He was more than willing to show me his equipment and answer any questions I had. Unlike the average cable installer, this guy knew what he was doing. Despite that, I really didn't want this guy in my house so I asked if I could do it myself. He said no problem and gave me enough coax & ends to do it with. He said just replace all the whale penis, coat hanger & coax that wasn't whatever the RG # they use and that should solve the problem. He would come back in a week and check the levels again. So I replaced everthing and never heard from them again.

Marc M. that is all true.

I used to service a local cable co's vans, and once inquired about the weird looking thingie on the dashboard. They told me it was an RF leakage detector, and they (well, they're supposed to) keep it on as they drive from one location to another in case they happen upon a leak. They also use it to detect and repair signal problems.

IIRC he told me that cable shares bandwidth with aircraft, however since it is supposed to be sheilded within the cable it is not normally a problem. As I live near a small airport, I remember many times in the past aircraft radio splashing through with 100% clarity into our cable signal at times. Knowing how my old man kept the debochary of cables behind the entertainment center, we likely had enormous RF leaks.