A rare example of excellence

I admit that I find myself too often frustrated by the awful service dolled out throughout the world. The list includes:

• Product support chat and phone agents who are clueless about their own product
• Support tickets that are never responded to
• The lack of any contact info on many websites
• Company phones that ring without being answered
• Poor repairs done by supposed professionals
• Dishonest agents of various services
• Work charged for that wasn’t needed or even done in the first place

I’ll stop there. I have my own beliefs about why this is the case and why it is only getting worse, but I’ll table my commentary on today’s culture for another time.

The poor standard across the board is the reason why, when I find someone who actually cares about their work and takes the effort to provide excellence, they seem like a bright beacon in a dark storm.

One such person is the proprietor of Electronic Repair Service in Phoenix Arizona named Igor. With his thick Russian accent and a cigarette almost always hanging from his mouth, Igor is a no-nonsense passionate individual about all things electronic. Think ‘Soup Nazi’ from the classic Seinfeld episode, but instead of doling out delicious soup, he provides pristine repairs to equipment from stereos to professional gear to aircraft electronics.

Last year, I decided to sell off most of my studio equipment since that functionality is now inside the computer as plugins and apps. Those stacks of equipment were taking up too much space, and knowing I’d be moving at some point, I needed to get rid of it. Some of that equipment was in good working order but other pieces stopped working properly many years ago. It was all very high end stuff that in working order would be worth some good money.

I found Igor through an internet search. I had given some of this equipment to other techs in the area only to be told it was unfixable, but I held on to it all on the hope that they were wrong. I called Igor one day, told him what I had, and he said to bring it in. He was very specific about making an appointment time and asked that I arrive promptly.

I walked into his strip mall shop that looked as if the International Space Station had exploded, spreading circuit boards, parts, tools, and equipment as far as the eye could see.

He asked me to place the piece of equipment on his counter for which he made room and he proceeded to remove the top. After probing with his multimeter for a bit, he said he knew what the problem was, gave me an approximate price, and told me that he’d call.

A week later, I returned to pick up the piece, but before letting me pay, he plugged in the unit and ran through most of the front controls proving to me that it worked, and reminding me what a fine job he had done cleaning and lubricating everything to bring the unit back to new condition.

Having passed the audition, I proceeded to bring him other pieces: compressors, guitar effect processors, and reverb units. Each one was transformed into perfect working order. So it was time to put Igor to another test.

I had a rack-mounted Tascam DA-30 DAT (Digital Audio Tape) machine that I had been told years ago couldn’t be fixed since it needed parts that were no longer available.