[TenTec] TEN-TEC Announcement January 4, 2016

[Al Sirois]

Tuesday morning, Guys:

I would still send my T-T Omni-A, -C, Scout's, and OMNI-VII back to the 
factory for repair

at the current rates.............I want it done right w/ a guarantee.

N1MHC/al
Maine
=========

-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Brown
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2016 12:09 AM
To: tentec at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] TEN-TEC Announcement January 4, 2016

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



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