I can't see any offers having been made to solder other people's tuners in EU. I live in Denmark, and I'll solder for anyone in EU or Norway who wants. I don't know wheter I'll charge anything for it. Probably not.

I think I'll try to get one of my own and solder that first, before committing to soldering anybody elses, but I'm quite confident that I can do it well.

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

Great, thanks for starting the thread and volunteering, My wife and I could do with one of those long weekends from Newcastle to come and collect it!

I would point out the line in my previous post about indemnity insurance, I'm sure that you are 100% competent, but you never know. For which reason, I would charge to cover that, your time and something for yourself.

Yes... 'I guess a reasonable price would be

price for tuner * ( OK tuners + damaged tuners) + price for cheap soldering iron
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK tuners

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)
PS. I live in Copenhagen, I seem to remember those newcastle-trips go to the other side of the country or to Norway or Gothenburg? (I'll be going to Stavanger in may2003, but I guess that'll be a little late? ;-)
On the other hand, Ryanair from London to Malmö (Sturup) is very cheap, and that's 20min by train from Copenhagen.

I think you're right about the mini cruises, I was half joking, but I would like to get to Scandinavia and do a bit of touring, maybe we will come across in our motorhome!

You can add me to the list of those willing to assemble a few kits for the soldering impaired in the UK.

While I strongly feel that tuner assembly by the community should not be taken as a serious money making opportunity, it would be nice to offset some of the cost of my own tuner if people were prepared to pay a small (but fair) charge for the diligent assembly of their kit.

You raised a good point about indemnity insurance - it would be unrealistic to ignore the possibility of a non-working finished tuner. Having a small fund set aside to cover this eventuality would make this a much less stressful event for the builder.

It's because of this problem that I won't be offering my services. A fried tuner (for whatever reason) could be rather expensive replace, especially if it isn't your tuner to begin with. I feel the risk to great to bother. You could end up seriously out of pocket, even with just one malfunctioning tuner. There's also the possibility the you might not be able to get hold of another kit for this person, then what do you do?

If I can offer an old man's advice again!

I think that it would be wrong for the assembler volunteers to get in to the cash flow of purchasing the tuner modules, but confine themselves to the cost of: Time taken to assemble+a bit for the trouble taken(OK, quite rightly in the spirit of the Empeg community)+ INSURANCE.

Forgive me for constantly returning to the insurance point, but you do have to consider consequential damage: Suppose in the assembly, or for that matter because of a faulty component, or because something gets dislodged in transit after assembly and the end result is that the tuner b*****s up the Empeg, you do need indemnity to cover the territories that you are providing the service in.

I don't work in insurance, so I'm not using the site as an advertisement, but I feel that I'm making a point that should be essential to keeping the Empeg people that use this site and the volunteer assemblers particularly, happy bunnys - think on!

I was thinking of the same thing, I have many years of soldering experience and was thinking of providing the service for the tuners and the lighted buttons, but what if there is a faulty component and somthing doesn't work, What do you do then?

Hence my point, you should be able to cover yourself for such an eventuality, with the minimum of hassle.

Greetings!

Perhaps one of the conditions that the solderer should impose is that this would be an "at your own risk" service. The volunteer should only be liable for the part kit, worst case, and that would only be in an instance where the job itself was botched.

As to the lighted buttons, that looks to be an order of magnitude (or more) harder than the kit. I know that Mark has been having a lot of fun with the new 4 LED boards.

I always expect intelligent input when I see your signature, I'm overawed by a man who can fill 120 gbs!

Once we start talking terms and conditions, assemblers have to get legal eagles into the mix. From business experience, certainly in the UK, it's generally cheaper and more quibble free to pay the insurance people to cover you - and, believe me, I wouldn't want to pay money to those guys unless it was absolutely necessary!

I've had a couple of emails asking if I can build tuners, probably because I mentioned in another thread that I may do a video build guide. I thought I should give my response here in case others were thinking of asking.

I cannot provide fully built tuners, nor build them if you send me the kit, either officially or personally.

Greetings!

Thanks for the kind words!!! Overawed is correct - it is easy to fill 120GB. Listening to it all is the hard part!!!

The only thing that would worry me is that insurance assumes formalizing the business a bit, and that could be difficult for some of the volunteers, especially if there are any tax implications. The structure that Mark has been using for the install of the LEDs has been working well, but I do not believe he has had any "dissatisfied customers" to date.

I hope it never becomes necessary, but I see where limiting the solderer's liability is necessary.

It seems to me that if someone is offering to do you a favor for free(solder a tuner etc.) That if you take them up on it, you do so AT YOUR OWN RISK. You either accept it or you don't have them do it. If you need assurance that there is no risk to you, you will have to build it yourself. Even if you took it to an electronics repair facility to have it built they would not guarantee its function after construction. I think you're making a mountain out of a mole hill. It sounds like the bottom line is: If you are going to offer to build these for free you need to have the person that owns it provide you with a signed document stating that they send this to you AT THEIR OWN RISK and hold you harmless for any reason , period.

I *really* don't worry.
After reading all these posts, I must say that my wallet could well take the cost of a destroyed tuner, and I'm pretty confident that neither I nor the mail will break anything. I guess that any faulty components could be returned, and that Patrick probably could get them returned to his supplyer and his money back as well.

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

OK, OK I take your point, I'm not trying to make life complicated, just point out the implications and suggest a way round them.

If something went wrong, I'm not the person that's going to get heavy about it, but experience tells me: There's always one!