When I started RTRTech about 7 years ago, I thought it might be a way to generate a bit of extra income over and above my sound company. I never dreamed it would morph into 40+calls/emails/texts a day, never mind a staggering around of repairs that arrive each and every month. However, the downside is that my home is truly a candidate for an episode of Hoarders, and the amount of incoming decks for repair is beyond a full time gig at this point. So much so, that this constant stream of incoming is preventing me from working on the barn find stuff. At least 70% of the Texas find some 19 months ago is still languishing in boxes, and much of that is now covered by the additional barn finds subsequent to my Texas haul.
Clearly, something has to give. I genuinely thought that selling my sound company would resolve this issue – and it did temporarily! But of course as I did more work on decks, word got out… more came in and now I find myself back at the point where I first started.
Worse, my part time guy that had been working with me for the past few months suddenly passed on a couple of weeks ago due to a heart condition. And frankly, finding a tech at any level is near impossible.
My biggest paranoia is to sell/send out sub-standard repairs simply due to something I’ve missed. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I know that I simply didn’t take the extra 5 minutes to check everything. I’ve known for months now that something needs to change, and after conferring with other techs and family, here’s the drastic change I must make:
Effective immediately, I will no longer accept new consumer RTR tape deck repairs. This will reduce my incoming repair level by approximately 70%, which will allow me to work on my 1000+ pieces of vintage and pro audio gear that I’ve got stored here. Perhaps not a ‘forever’ policy, but I anticipate that it will be until at least 2026.
The exceptions to this are:
- I will continue to support any consumer deck I’ve sold or serviced. As long as it has my RTR sticker on the back, I’ll take care of it.
- I will accept any consumer deck repairs of anyone that has already contacted me and is in the process of sending it in.
I will continue to service:
- pro studio decks
- semi pro home studio multitracks
- if it has XLR inputs and outputs, I’ll service it
- tape delays/space echos
Once I climb out from underneath the mountain of decks to be repaired, you will see a huge upswing in the amount of decks I will have for sale, in addition to other pro and consumer audio gear. I still have a ton of consumer decks that will get repaired and listed for sale as well.
I truly appreciate all of my customers, and that you’ve trusted me with your equipment. I just need to roll back on the sheer quantity of the workload that I have so that I don’t burn out, and of course, equally as important is that the quality of my work does not suffer as a result.
Thanks!