Northwest Audio Service — Local services in Renton

John is the best. As others have said, this is the only place to bring your vintage stereo gear in need of service or repair. Not only is he a wealth of knowledge on all sorts of subjects but he's truly a joy to have a conversation with. I brought in my 35 year old MCS tuner/amp that had evacuated the smoke out of a couple of resistors. John made the repairs plus went through the whole unit and tuned it up (upgrading a couple of components with more robust alternatives and replacing all of the display lamps with 14V bulbs for long life). It works as good as new now.

As long as you're not in a rush, you will be very satisfied. As you might expect, he has a lot of work going on at once and he can't always get right to whatever just came in. My repairs took about 6 weeks but I wasn't in a hurry and would rather have it done correctly than immediately. For about the cost of a new, disposable stereo from WalMart, I got my old friend back, ready for another 35 years of...

John is quite a human being. If you just want to know about the repair work on my vintage Marantz 2270, it was stellar. It was a minor repair (blown fuse) but I mentioned something else wrong (inaccurate tuner), John showed me what the issue was, repaired it in front of me and taught me how to do it myself in the future. John seemed so into the unit and its condition.

As a person, I don't even know where to begin. We called as we approached because we could not find his entrance. Once he clarified and we pulled up we were greeted by John, at the door, holding it open for us. Before we even parked! Oh and by the way, there were other customers in the store. For whatever reason, he just decided to welcome us.

John is a fascinating person who has been in this line of work forever. He also shared some very lovely personal anecdotes while he was going about his work. I sort of want my stuff to break just so I have a reason to go spend...

Excellent source of knowledge and expertise in Greater Seattle area for all things audio. I brought in my Akai GX-M50 vintage (1979) cassette deck which was not terribly happy recording Type II cassettes. Within minutes, John had it up on the bench and was dialed in with a scope on signal levels, comparing source signal with Type II cassette recorded signal (it is a three head unit). We could see that Bias was working, but record levels needed to be adjusted and quick as you please, it was opened up and both trim pots were adjusted real-time while watching the scope so that it was spot-on. It was a very great experience, and we had a few interesting conversations as well -- this is the sort of repair shop that is a golden resource for the Hi-Fi/vintage audio community! Without question I will be back anytime we have a repair in...