Alpha Tech Electronics — Attraction in St. Louis

First time customer here. I purchased a Technics 616 cassette deck that needed a little bit of TLC. I checked my local area to see if any shops could do the job and they all recommend me to Alpha Tech.

I'll be honest, I had my doubts, but the reviews gave me confidence to make the 45 minute drive to the shop from St. Charles. If you meet Zaw, he may not be the most enthusiastic person you meet, but I soon found out he is very kind hearten and takes care of his customers. After explaining what I believed to be wrong with the deck, he took notes and then took the time to answer my many questions I had about the format as I am only 19 and the 'new generation' isn't exactly into cassettes.

The next day, I received a call from Kevin, and he informed me of everything I asked them to check and what else he found wrong. He gave me a repair cost and asked if I wanted him to go ahead with the operation. I agreed.

He repaired the deck in as little as 3 hours! He checked everything: -Fixed my Rec/Playback switch -Cleaned and lubed mechanism -Reconditioned belts -Realigned heads and corrected speed -Redecorated Rec/Playback levels

Once I brought the deck home, I noticed the exterior was cleaned up as well. Kevin even took the time to sand down the metal and remove any chips and scratches on the exterior! :D

All the steps taken were recorded onto a ticket along with the technician who repaired it, the hours it took to repair, and total expenses. My total came to ~$100, plus a $50 down payment that is factored into costs. If your total does not exceed the $50, you won't be billed for anything else.

I'm touched to see so much effort put into restoring this deck, even going as far as redoing the metal finish and taking the extra steps to insure everything is top notch quality! At the end of it all, Zaw offered me a free Type-II Chrome cassette to test and compare the audio quality over the Type-I Ferric cassettes I already owned. As a closing statement, I will say this. If you need ANY vintage audio equipment repaired, the one and only place I recommend...

Brought in a receiver to be serviced for tuner section issue - rest of unit working perfectly. Called back 13 days later and was told receiver had blown muting transistors and bad ICs and was not repairable. Picked up from this place and decided to take a look myself. Dust on the circuit boards and components were undisturbed. Inside looked untouched.no way possible any trouble shooting was done at all. Doubt that they even opened it up at all. Did some research on the internet and discovered the problem was a blown 100ma fuse on the tuner board. A 50 cent fuse that I replaced and everything works perfectly. They are either inept or just didn’t feel like taking the time so they made up some technical sounding non-sense and returned it to me. A fuse....pretty basic stuff. Wasted my time and money. ...

Zaw has been involved with quality two channel systems since the late 60s. they do quality work at a fair price. I have yet to encounter something that they could not fix.

Zaw gives free advice on what components might work well together; it is not always a straightforward question, but his years of experience are a factor there. They found an idler wheel for an old Fischer compact system. Since these are not real high end (compact systems), almost no one else will handle these things. But they also represent the very high end of the market as well. "Asian lady" is a bit of an insulting reference. She has always been polite and helpful for me. Agent Orange is also polite and helpful.

If you seek vintage audio, this is the...