CAE Sound — Local services in San Mateo

Long story short, the tech is blatantly unprofessional and not ashamed to double-dip (collect warranty repair payment from the manufacturer & take extra money from the customer).

Last year, I was in my house switching the impedance on my Peavey Valveking head to use with a different cabinet when the switch broke. CAE is the nearest Peavey service center, so I brought my Peavey head there. I showed my receipt proving I'm the original owner with 18 months left on the warranty, & explained that the switch broke while I was using the amp head in my house.

A week later, I get a call from CAE telling me that my warranty claim had been rejected but CAE would do the repair for $65. I had to go over CAE's head to talk with a supervisor at Peavey customer service to get my claim approved - and then I got another call back from CAE asking me for an extra $35 to do the repair on top of Peavey's reimbursement to the service center. (I talked the tech down to $20).

The tech said all of the following to me over the phone, and I wrote it down at the time:

"Customer service tells us one thing, and then the customer goes crying to another department to tell us something else and now the whole situation is all messed up."

"This is clearly breakage, probably from transportation."

[After I pointed out that my original documentation clearly stated that I purchased in store & kept the amp head in my room ever since]: "Well, I don't want to start an argument, but that's not how warranties work. You're lucky you got anything at all, but it puts us in a bit of a tight spot."

It was very frustrating to see the tech advocate against his own customer, especially in such an entitled & abrasive manner. Demanding extra payment on top of the warranty rate is totally inappropriate, too - nobody is forcing you to be a Peavey service center. If you don't want to accept Peavey's rates, then ask Peavey to stop listing you as one of their...

I discovered CAE sound over 10 years ago – when I was looking to have repair work done on an ARP 2600. I was surprised to find a place on the mid-peninsula that did repair work on vintage synthesizers and keyboards. Once I finally met Peter in his shop, I realized his expertise extended deep into other electronics – vintage organs, amplifiers, even Leslie cabinets, and much more.

Since then, Peter has also serviced my ailing vintage Moogs and Korgs. Not only does he fix the problems, he often finds other trouble spots that could develop into problems. He’s usually quite busy, so the repair queue can be long, but the wait is worth it (since I’m never immediately dependent on my older gear). But a long queue reflects how much in demand he is. His working knowledge of electronics is quite impressive, and he is quite resourceful at finding replacement parts. He also repairs MIDI generation keyboards, even early ones, so he has computers running multiple older operating systems in order to communicate with them.

Peter has been doing this sort of troubleshooting and repair for a long time. He’s a master craftsman, and those are getting harder to find. He’s great to talk to in person. If you get him on the phone, be aware there may be a couple other customers in his shop so he may not have time to chat, as he’s literally a one-man operation.

Whenever I have any insurmountable issues with my gear, Peter & CAE Sound are my first...

Comically bad experience.

I called CAE and told them what was not working properly on our Yamaha digital piano. I shared the authorization number that Yamaha had given to me (Yamaha agreed to pay parts and labor since the piano was out of warranty).

We arranged a date/time to bring it down to them. They told me it would be weeks or more to fix it and that they could not give me an accurate time estimate until it was in the shop. I stupidly figured that was how all piano repair shops worked.

The following day they called to say Yamaha would definitely NOT be paying for parts and labor and if we wanted to pay something like $500-$600 to have them fix it to let them know. They told me that Yamaha had told them the authorization number was akin to taking a number at a deli counter.

Confused, I called Yamaha again. Yamaha called CAE. Yamaha reported back to me that CAE said they didn't care if Yamaha would pay or not, they didn't want to fix the piano.

I called Third Ear Sound in Hayward. They took the piano immediately, fixed it in under 24 hours, worked with Yamaha, were polite and professional (Yamaha of course paid for...