| Author |
Topic: Peavey Clasic 50 woes |
Jim Peters
From:
St. Louis, Missouri, USA, R.I.P.
|
Posted 10 Dec 2008 6:24 pm |
|
Had to repair the preamp board on my son's classic 50 2-12. He bought it used 2 weeks ago, and it soon went south. Turns out the preamp board has some bad traces, and has been repaired once already.
After making the needed repair and replacing the phase inverter, the amp now sounds great again, so I decided to try to get a replacement board from PV.
The replacement is over $300!! The board is about 4"X6". I guess I'll just keep repairing the old board! Anybody else ever tried to get a replacement board for one of these? JP
_________________
Carter,PV,Fender |
|
|
 |
Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 1:56 am
|
|
Historically electronic replacement parts for "stuff" carries a 3x or 4x markup, this is not uncommon in Industry. Inventory cost, people handling costs, manufacturing costs of an item just sitting there etc. Think about it, it may sit there forever and never be sold ! They make 25 spare PC boards and pray they sell 12 . Those 12 pay all the bills.
I am not surprised that the PC board is $300!
Maybe call them and negotiate, you never know.
tp |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 7:36 am
|
|
Was that price directly from Peavey, or with a dealer markup?
Assuming that these amps are still in-production, which I think they are - the boards should be getting made in large quantities for production, and are usable by production. If so, it seems to me that the unit cost to make these should be very low indeed. $300 seems like a very high price indeed for an in-production part like this - what does the whole amp cost? I'll bet one can find a used whole amp for not a lot more than this. There's a 4-10 version on ebay with 10 hours left now still down in the low $200 range - it's not done yet, but how much higher will it go? I see new ones in the $600-700 range (yeah, I know that's lower than MAP).
I spent a period of my life in the service and parts division of a large automaker doing operations research - our specialty was industrial economics and materials & supply-chain management. No doubt the summed cost of the parts of a manufactured item typically significantly exceeds the whole-unit price, but this example seems extreme to me - maybe I'm missing some important aspect here, but that's the way it strikes me.
Where things start getting expensive is having to manufacture small runs of parts for service after production stops. The smart approach for parts which are very cheap to make in-production but very expensive out-of-production is to stock a generous (in terms of covering uncertainty in demand) lifetime service supply from the last production run, which typically does run into some obsolesence. Out-of-production parts cost generally is higher for all these reasons.
IMO, a policy to make service parts prohibitively expensive is to make the unit unserviceable. In fact, some electronics companies (not Peavey, to my knowledge, who I think have had good service policies) now have a policy of replace-under-warranty, and not repair - another move to the truly "throwaway society".
All my opinions, of course. |
|
|
|
John Billings
From:
Ohio, USA
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 2:18 pm
|
|
| That's for the board with all the parts mounted and soldered right? Still seems high! But a small board from Vox was about the same price. |
|
|
|
Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 2:56 pm
|
|
Generally speaking, and I know this from my own manufacturing experience, production budgets are not the same as service budgets. Yes, PC boards may be made at the same time but they are not drawn from the same inventory when needed. Production anticipates how many of something they will make, service /parts anticipates how many they may need for the year(s)and they plan/budget accordingly.
Production orders parts that will be used, not stored. Service orders parts that will be stored. Pricing and margins are totally different for each of these scenario's. Nobody wants to make parts and store them, when they do, we are paying on the other end !
Amplifiers are built and priced based on margins of everything combined, parts,labor,overhead etc.
Spare parts have only one thing to go on. They have to pay there own way so to speak.
This is not uncommon to have a PC bod cost $300 stand alone. High ? yes, but not uncommon.
tp |
|
|
|
Jim Peters
From:
St. Louis, Missouri, USA, R.I.P.
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 2:59 pm
|
|
That's straight from PV. I never could figure how to just get the preamp board, the lady was unclear, but I think it was for the whole amp. If my son keeps the amp and it craps out again, I'll just print my own circuit board, probably cost $25 in parts. JP
_________________
Carter,PV,Fender |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 11 Dec 2008 3:14 pm
|
|
| Quote: |
| Generally speaking, and I know this from my own manufacturing experience, production budgets are not the same as service budgets. ... Production anticipates how many of something they will make, service /parts anticipates how many they may need for the year(s)and they plan/budget accordingly. |
Where I've been, service and parts were separate divisions from production - sure service forecasting and ordering is done separately. But if service orders are having to set up separate runs to get the service parts they need, then IMHO, that's no way to run an airline. On in-production parts, it is much more economical to piggyback service orders onto production runs. Of course, service pricing is unique - production doesn't normally sell parts. But for in-production parts, the costs should be similar - how does this justify prohibitive prices for service parts? I don't think the effect on customer satisfaction is trivial at all.
| Quote: |
| If my son keeps the amp and it craps out again, I'll just print my own circuit board, probably cost $25 in parts. |
Yup, that's the ticket. But that would leave me with a very sour taste in my mouth on future amp purchases. Just my opinion. |
|
|
|
