I hate to do this to a small business owner, but my experience with Shawn was pretty horrible. I sent my Dad's 1968 Pioneer SX-1500TF to Shawn to have it re-capped back in June 2013 and didn't get it back until February 2014. Here are my issues.....
COMMUNICATION: Shawn's communication was non-existent. I had to badger him for any sort of update. He never contacted me to let me know that he received the stereo. He was originally supposed to have the restoration completed by August 2013. When I didn't hear from him in August, I called him only to be told that parts are on backorder and that he didn't start the job. This went on until November 2013. He then let me know that he injured his knee and didn't know when he'd be able to complete the job. Apparently his shop was up a flight of stairs and he could get up them. Then magically it was done and shipped. I will say this for Shawn, he was very pleasant to talk to.
SHIPPING: My stereo arrived in an oversized box with a couple of air packets thrown on top of the stereo. The box was held together with duct tape instead of packing tape and was coming open at the bottom. Basically, my stereo was bouncing around in a box without any padding. WHO SHIPS ANTIQUES OR ELECTRONICS LIKE THIS?!?!
PHYSICAL CONDITION: My stereo has a wood case around it. It was shipped to Shawn without damage. Arrived with two decent sized nicks on the top of the case. Shawn also removed all of the case machine screws, apparently lost them and used sheet metal screws instead. WHO DOES THIS TO AN ALL ORIGINAL ANTIQUE?!?!
ELECTRONICS: The stereo arrived in not workable order. It would play with all kinds of odd transient noises and also had a issue were it took roughly 1 minute to turn. Neither issues were present prior to shipping to Shawn. Shawn dismissed both issues. He stated that he never heard the noises and that it was most likely interference. As for the 1 minute turn on thing, I got some long answer that really didn't make sense. After a series of emails, I finally gave up on Shawn correcting this.
Flash forward to today.... I just picked up my stereo from another well known San Diego audio repair shop. The diagnosis? Well, Shawn didn't replace all the capacitors I was charged for. Some of the capacitors he did replace were the wrong values and wrong physical size. He also installed two capacitors backwards. The stereo also needed roughly 20 transistors replaced. I had asked Shawn about that and was told that he couldn't do it because of some nonsensical reason. Now that Shawn's work has been corrected, my stereo turns on in less than 5 seconds, has no weird noises and sounds great.
AVOID GOLDEN GATE ELECTRONIC REPAIR! read more