3395 West Cheyenne Ave. Suite #105 N. Las Vegas NV, 89032

(702) 395-7005 info@thermalrelief.com

Wall of Shame

Sometimes you just wouldn’t believe it unless we showed you. These are un-doctored pictures from customers units that were brought in to us to repair. Just think, the so called “techs” that made these repairs are still out there performing their magic daily. Now that’s a scary thought!


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Now those of you that have been inside a guitar will recognize this as a Fender Strat 5-way switch that is used to select the pickups. The customer brought us the guitar complaining that his tone was changing when he played without touching any controls. He told us a well known Las Vegas “luthier” (and I use that term loosely) had just installed a new 5 way switch less than 2 months ago. Besides the horrible solder joints on the terminals, notice in the far right picture the red arrow is pointing to an intermittent solder bridge which is causing two pickups to be both on no matter what position the switch is set to. And those of you who have seen these switches before will notice how the “luthier” ruined the brand new switch by splashing solder on the wiper of the switch. (white arrow)

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In the same guitar the customer told me the “luthier” had installed new pots because his old ones were worn out. (I saw the invoices so I know this is true) Certainly a nice matching set. One of the two tone controls is a linear taper pot while the other is an audio taper pot. And unfortunatatly I didn’t take a picture of the washers they installed trying to make the 3 different height pot bushings equal out so the knobs would be at the same height.

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And just when you think the soldering couldn’t get any worse than the switch above, I give you the inside of a 2 switch footswitch for an amp that came in to us. That blob or shape in the lower part of the pictures is the broken switch. Here a well trained person in the art of soldering attached the wires back to the broken switch and then “dripped ” solder like you would drip wax from a candle over the terminal. All the white specks you see in the pictures are flux and solder that splashed everywhere while he was driping the solder on to the joint. A particular thing to observe is how they managed to get the white stranded wire to “tack” to the solid buss wire with one large drip of solder. (red arrow) Now that takes some practice of the drip soldering technique. Oh…I guess that’s what all the drips or misses of solder underneath it are.

Need a Drink?
These pictures are of a Turbosound/MC2 sub-woofer amplifier that was housed in a Turbosound sub-woofer. The sub-woofers surround a dance floor in a popular nite club here in Las Vegas. The two “screened” ventilation windows on each amp are about waist high facing the dance floor. Apparently someone “mistook” these vents for “waste disposal” containers and poured a Rum & Coke into each one on this particular amplifier. The electronics were removed, disassembled, and washed in water to remove the residue. These pictures are the chassis of the amp with the electronics removed.

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