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John Frondelli |
They’re never written about in trade or consumer magazines. Heck, they’re rarely even talked about in the industry. But we would never be the same without them. They are what continues to make MI hum along. And oh yeah, did we mention their business is strong right now?
Who are these people? We’re talking about the service industry, which finally gets the spotlight shone upon them this month. Members of the service industry work long days and nights making sure instruments are in proper working order. Some larger manufacturers have their own service departments but can’t possibly take every repair. Other companies have no service department at all. In both circumstances, the work is outsourced to only a few independent service companies.
Let’s start with dBm Pro Audio/Music Services, which is located in New York City. The company was founded by Steve Dwork and partner John Frondelli is a huge component of its day-to-day operations. “The business was an outgrowth of my recording studio,” said Dwork. “It was founded in ’87. It evolved into a major repair studio. It just kept growing. People kept bringing stuff to us. We started getting authorizations from various manufacturers. Now it’s our main business.”
The company employs six repair technicians. Some are part-time employees. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is when the business is most busy, and hence when a full staff can be found. This was proven when we visited on a Tuesday. As we interviewed Dwork and Frondelli, technicians were hard at work with the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” and “She Loves You” pumping in the background. “Some days we need a mixer tech more than others,” said Frondelli. “Some days we need an amp tech more than others. Some days we need a digital tech more than others. It depends how the workflow shifts around.”
dBm’s client list is a literal who’s who of the industry. “We’re the only authorized service center for Digidesign hardware on the East Coast,” said Frondelli. “Sometimes, our digital tech is here very late at night troubleshooting problems for someone who needs a controller or an interface tomorrow in their recording studio.
“Other than Digidesign,” he continued, “there are very few manufacturers we don’t serve. Fender, Mackie, Behringer, Korg, and JBL are big clients. We’ve also adapted well to different product lines, which is probably why we’re still here. We’re always training. I’ve been to Digidesign, Crown, JBL, Alesis, and wherever we have to go to plug ourselves in. That’s how we stay in business. We’re looking into other avenues as well, including research and development, design and engineering, etc.”
The West Coast version of dBm, so to speak, is Advanced Musical Electronics, based in California and owned by Ruth Fischler.
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Ruth Fischier and Steve Dwork. |
Diamond in the Rough
Considering the important role the service industry plays, why is it so invisible? “Well, nobody wants to talk about service,” said Frondelli. “Even when I worked for manufacturers, they didn’t want to think about service. Service is the bastard-child of the industry and most of us have ‘the back of the bus’ syndrome. Even at NAMM, we walk around with ‘buyer’ badges. [Laughs] We’re not buyers and we’re not visitors. We’re really a whole separate industry. But we’re so small that nobody will recognize it.
“On the other hand,” he added, “it’s such a vital part of the industry. A lot of people don’t realize that if we didn’t exist, their lives as musicians, recording studios, and club owners, etc., would be pretty miserable. We even do exchanges on products that come in from [major chain stores] because the exchange has gone to the service level. The customer can’t go back to the store and exchange certain products. We’re more than just the guys in the back room with soddering irons.”
“It’s difficult doing this for a living these days,” said Dwork. “We’re a larger slice of a smaller pie. There are fewer and fewer people doing this or who have an interest in doing this. I’m on the board of the Institute of Audio Research (IAR). I want people who are interested in technical services. Nobody wants to do that. Everyone wants to be a producer.”
dBm therefore has a major challenge in finding employee talent. “Most people start out as hobbyists,” said Frondelli. “Everybody now wants to be a computer technician or a producer. We’ve had a lot of interns from IAR over the years. Very few have had the capability to become a decent tech. One of the good techs we have is back at IAR teaching and another, Alberto, has been working with us for many years as our digital audio tech. You don’t see people opening up service shops anymore. Everyone in our industry is here by legacy. They work in shops that have been around for many years. In this economy, you wouldn’t want to open a service shop either because it takes years to get your clientele.”
Profit Pours in
Although dBm has perhaps been forgotten by the industry, that doesn’t mean business is bad. It’s the contrary in fact. “We’re doing very well,” said Dwork. “We’re getting calls from schools, musicians; any large entity that has actual budgets. We often hear, ‘We’ll spend the money to fix it, because we have no budget to replace it.’”
“Purchasing budgets and repair budgets are two separate issues,” said Frondelli. “So while someone might have had their purchasing budget slashed, they still have a wide open servicing budget. That’s good for us. We also have private musicians who drag stuff out of their closets and ask us to repair it. Case in point is an antique Moog module we had in the back brought to us by New York University. They told us to do whatever it takes to restore it.”
When you devote your career to the service industry, you know you will face new challenges every day. This is not a sit-by-your-computer all day position. But that doesn’t mean its major players don’t enjoy the challenge. “It is challenging and you have to be a major gear head,” said Frondelli. “But it’s a lot of fun. It’s the music industry. If we had to go out into the nine-to-five corporate world, we’d probably sink very quickly. There are frustrating days. On occasion, we talk to a manufacturer and they say, ‘We don’t have parts, we don’t have schematics, but you have to fix it.’ But we never have the feel this is an assembly-line kind of job. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to fix an instrument. Sometimes, it takes 15 hours. Every day is different. Possibly the most interesting repair we ever had was when a customer brought in what’s called an RCA Storytelling piano. Only 300 were made between 1938 and 1939. I had to do a lot of historical research on it. It was the first electric piano made without a soundboard. It’s a remarkable art deco piece we had never seen before. We were asked to restore the electronics on it because it’s going to be placed in a musical electronics museum. We worked on it for about four or five months until we sent it out [repaired].”
“The older instruments are especially interesting,” said Dwork. “Like when someone comes in with a Rhodes piano or a Wurlitzer. Customers appreciate the fact that you’re resurrecting something that is a wonderful product. Sometimes, those people call us and thank us for fixing the instrument. When that happens, it makes our day.”
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