[TenTec] TEN-TEC Announcement January 4, 2016

[Jim Brown]

On Mon,1/4/2016 8:20 PM, John Henry wrote:
> $140 is the cost of the hour it takes to handle it in receiving (computer
> entry, rma, etc.) unbox it, store packing material, take initial look at
> rig, and the subsequent time after a repair for boxing it, collecting
> payment, calling customer, etc.

In the mid-70s, I managed the service department of good sized sound and 
video contractor. I find John Henry's discussion of the costs of running 
a service department and the ancillary services to support it to be very 
much in line with reality. There are many costs -- in addition to 
salary, there are payroll taxes, local business taxes, real estate costs 
for the building where the service department is housed, a stock of 
repair parts (plus a place to put them, someone to keep track of them, 
and to chase replacements for parts that are no longer available), 
someone to manage the operation, someone to talk on the phone, insurance 
on the building and the business, a shipping, packing, and receiving 
operation, and a billing operation. ALL of those people need to make a 
living wage, and what that wage is in $/hour depends a bit on where you 
live.

A good bench tech needs solid electronic knowledge that relates to the 
gear being repaired, a history of what goes wrong with that gear, and a 
thought process that makes him/her good at figuring out what the 
problem(s) are and fixing them. It also requires very good mechanical 
skills. Think about all the different generations of gear sold by Ten 
Tec over the years, and the wide range of circuits and components used. 
My Titan power amp uses all discrete semiconductors, tubes in the output 
stage, not a chip to be seen. Compare that to the latest generation 
stuff, which is chips, microprocessors, SMT, etc. Indeed, that service 
department needs different people to work on different gear.

Add to that the fact that Ten Tec has moved several times. The very well 
respected loudspeaker company Altec went through several corporate 
buyouts, and in the late '70s or early '80s, the mental midgets who were 
the latest buyers decided to sell their Orange County headquarters for 
its real estate value and moved everything to Oklahoma. The guys who 
built their very sophisticated loudspeakers had no interest in moving to 
OK, so it was a couple of years before they could ship any of their 
high-tech, $6k a pair studio monitors. That in addition the fact that 
the Orange Co HQ included a very large anechoic acoustic chamber (needed 
to test loudpseakers), which would cost megabucks to build somewhere else.

Corporate buyouts tend to make a big mess, even when they're done for 
the right reasons. Think about the employees who didn't want to disrupt 
their lives to move from TN to CO, but who might not have had a job at 
all if the company folded entirely.

I suggest that we all suck it up, realize that old gear is expensive to 
repair, and, like the folks now running Ten Tec, figure out how to make 
the best of our options without bitching about it for ever and ever. The 
company, with the people, that made all that great gear are GONE.

73, Jim K9YC