We get the call every week. Or more! “I have a Hafler 200 power amp that’s failed. Can you fix it?”

You can substitute almost any name in there for Hafler (but not BRYSTON!) If the amp is over about 7 years old, the answer is almost always NO.

Why?!

First of all, while we’ve all heard the case of the fellow who got 30+ years out of his old amp, a Hafler in this case, the typical lifespan is more like 10-12. It’s true. We know. We sold piles of them in the 80s. Almost all have bitten the dust by now. People bring in old amps regularly for us to check out.

Now that your old Hafler has croaked, should you fix it? NO.

Any repair at this stage of the game is money poorly spent. It will run a minimum bench fee, hourly rate plus parts. You would be LUCKY to get any amp repaired for under $300-500. Further, even if you get it fixed, that repair is by parts that won’t match what’s in there- which erases the engineering design of the product. In 91 days you’re back where you began.

We have so many GREAT new electronic values these days, it’s sheer folly to try to fix gear that’s a couple decades or more old.

For openers, we have the new Axiom power amps, made in Canada with a 5 year warranty, that sound better than virtually anything we had in the 80s. They are smoother and have outstanding headroom.

We have Rogue tube preamps, made in Pennsylvania, starting at $1800. We have the Rogue Sphinx integrated amp at only $1700. With products like these, it makes no sense to spend real money fixing old stuff. Even if you’re lucky and you get it to work again, it won’t work LONG and you still have hot, harsh sounding gear from back in the day.

You can get brand new gear, with dramatically better parts than we even knew about 20-30 years ago. The new stuff sounds better in every way, shape and form. The reliability is so much more solid as well.