Refurbishing

Blue Is Beautiful

is there any way to do this yourself? like a monitor or a television or some old ass electronic stuff, are there places you can send it to where they'll look through manuals or specs or something and find all the old parts or modern equivalent to make it like brand new?

I guess i'm asking, you know how online electronic companies will refurbish old Panasonic or Sony equipment and get it certified by them to say it has been refurbished but meets their standards, is there a way for private individuals to do that with a company?


i know some music sites are dedicated to finding old tubes and capacitors for vintage amps, guitars, and synth equipment, since the tubes and capacitors are part of what give it a distinctive sound.


i have 2 monitors that are discontinued, and a television that was pretty great for it's era, but two of the monitors are dead and taking up space at the rents house, and this other monitor still works, but it's dimming.

i found the manuals and electrical specs for the monitors. they even tell you what parts they use, piece by piece, in case you have to rebuild the board. i just don't know how to do that or find the parts, so maybe there's a place that will do it for you?

Thanks!

blincoln

It's fairly easy to find electronics repair shops in major cities, but unless you're dealing with something that can't be replaced new (like the vintage music gear you mentioned) it's usually cheaper and/or more effective to buy something new.

Look in your yellow pages under TV repair and you should find something. It can't hurt to call them, but like I said usually you'd get better results buying something new. I don't like it because it seems like a waste, but it's generally true.

EggyToast

Yeah, any certified repair shop should have no problem getting/having and installing the parts necessary.

Unfortunately it's usually quite expensive. The labor of figuring out what's wrong and installing/testing hardware, coupled with the cost of parts, tends to make refurbishing on your own cost almost as much as just buying new. That's why a lot of TV repair shops have gone the way of the dodo -- why spend $300 repairing a TV when a new one that's better costs $350?

I've had a few things fixed, such as music equipment. You can usually call the manufacturer's repair lines and say "I have X and it's busted. Where should I take it to get it fixed?" They'll usually have a listing of local registered repair shops.

Blue Is Beautiful

ah, i didn't know about the certified places. maybe there's one here.

the two monitors were top of the line CAD monitors from the late 90s, early 2000s. my friend's brother gave them to me because he moved on from wanting to be a designer and i showed interest in it. but they're really good for gaming too. but yea i still use them for design.

the one monitor cost 1,200 new at the time. and i know lots of designers still look for these monitors because they are so insanely sharp and bright and distortion free. it's also HUGE. the other one is like it's baby brother. it's these:

Sony GDM-C520K
CPD-420GS

the thing is most manufacturers have discontinued producing monitors, especially good ones. Sony has moved on to subpar LCDs. all the ones i have found recently are terrible displays and are too small. everything is going towards LCD, but even top-of-the-line LCD screens like Eizo still get poor reviews in brightness and color, so why spend 3,000 on a LCD screen that is still going to look terrible?


but yea, so i wouldn't mind spending quite a bit of money to get these monitors back to new condition. the reason i'm reticent to send it to a TV repair shop is that i don't think they're used to dealing with high-end specialized equipment , and they might mess up something having to do with the sharpness or color without realizing what they're doing.

so thanks, i'll look into the certified shops.

but if anyone else has suggestions, let me know!

Corvus

Most TV repair places these days work on computers and monitors as well. Its worth looking into . Don't overpay for an estimate though. Most places shouldn't charge much to look at it and tell you if its fixable, and how much it might cost to fix it.