Back in the 70s I put myself through college by working in several different consumer electronics service departments.
Large companies that are still very much in business will often not have the part you need to service an older model! Don't think for a minute that that is something unique to high end!!
I used to really hate seeing Aiwa cassette decks as they would gun the spare parts only 5 years after the model was made. So you might need a small plastic part that had broken, something that only cost a few cents to make and the machine was unrepairable without it. I got pretty good at finding ways to put such parts back together with heat, wire and glue...
So when I started my company I made serviceability a high priority. That was because I might be gone someday but also because if we had to fix it, it would not be a nightmare :)
These days service is a lot trickier. It actually seems to me that getting tube stuff serviced is easier than solid state. Certain semiconductors that were easy to find 10 years ago are getting tricky to find! The IC industry in particular is very whimsical about what chips stay around and what don't. Try and find the ICs for a Technics SP-10 and you will see what I mean.
Large companies that are still very much in business will often not have the part you need to service an older model! Don't think for a minute that that is something unique to high end!!
I used to really hate seeing Aiwa cassette decks as they would gun the spare parts only 5 years after the model was made. So you might need a small plastic part that had broken, something that only cost a few cents to make and the machine was unrepairable without it. I got pretty good at finding ways to put such parts back together with heat, wire and glue...
So when I started my company I made serviceability a high priority. That was because I might be gone someday but also because if we had to fix it, it would not be a nightmare :)
These days service is a lot trickier. It actually seems to me that getting tube stuff serviced is easier than solid state. Certain semiconductors that were easy to find 10 years ago are getting tricky to find! The IC industry in particular is very whimsical about what chips stay around and what don't. Try and find the ICs for a Technics SP-10 and you will see what I mean.