Great question, warranties are an important concept to understand when dealing with old equipment, so let’s dig into it.

Our work and any parts we supply and install are covered by an industry-standard three-month warranty. This means that if any of the parts we install fail, or the work we do is somehow incorrect or unsatisfactory (both incredibly rare), we will rectify them at our cost. You just need to let us know and return the equipment to us within 3 months.

You may know of our reputation for attention to detail, and this includes supply chain, supplier and parts provenance, parts storage and life considerations, etc, so it is very important to understand what this warranty does and does not cover, with equipment that may be up to 50+ years old:

• Parts we’ve not supplied and installed are not covered by our warranty
• Faults related to age or wear and tear needing further attention are not covered
• Issues not caused or related to work we’ve completed are not covered
• Things that I cannot logically be held responsible for, logically, are not covered

Think of it this way: when a car goes in for a service, it doesn’t come back with a warranty on the entire car and engine, does it? The completed work and parts installed are covered by warranty as they should be, but beyond that, the mechanic is not responsible for work they haven’t done.

Example

Take the case of an amplifier with a worn and noisy volume potentiometer, a fairly common scenario. Say the potentiometer cannot be replaced, only serviced. We cannot warrant the volume potentiometer to be free from faults because we didn’t replace it. We are not responsible for its wear, only for cleaning and servicing it. This does not guarantee it will work perfectly; nobody can offer that guarantee, because we are not dealing with brand-new components.

We cannot warrant the rest of the amplifier to be free from faults, either. We test things to determine that they work well before giving them back. Nothing is returned without testing, and we explain any remaining faults we find. In cases like this, amplifiers may contain 99% of their original parts.

So Mike, you’re saying you won’t offer a warranty on parts I supply?

That’s absolutely what I’m saying, and standard practice by the way, across all industries. If I didn’t buy it from my trusted supplier, and knowing how many low-quality fake parts are out there, there is no way I would ever offer a warranty on it.

What Does This Mean?

We don’t have one of the best reputations in the industry for no reason, and thankfully, most understand the logic here. We look after our customers, even when something isn’t our fault, and we have a vanishingly low warranty claim rate in the first place, precisely because of how I source and supply parts and my approach to technical work.

The equipment I see is often neglected and temperamental. Sometimes, even just opening, cleaning, or moving old equipment that’s long overdue for maintenance can cause issues to surface. This is the nature of complex equipment, and these issues are neither the owner’s fault nor mine. 

It is both fair and reasonable to charge for non-warranty-related follow-up work, and people must expect that, but we do so sparingly, sometimes even gratis, and always with the customer and their equipment in mind.