In a Fix? These Audio Repair Specialists Keep Gear Going

In a time where staying healthy is the #1 priority, audio pros still have monitor the health of their mics, monitors, racks and rigs.

As it turns out, fixing gear was a formative experience for Riley Difford. Today, he’s in charge of dBm Pro Audio Repair, the busy repair division of Pro-Sound in NYC (official title: “chief wrangler”), and it’s been a very interesting road that got him there. Difford started off his techy career by being born into a musically astute family: His dad is none other than lyricist/songwriter of the acclaimed band Squeeze (“Tempted,” “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)”).

While Difford’s famous father soaked up the limelight onstage, his son developed slightly different interests. “I was always really drawn to what was going on behind the scenes,” he recalls of his upbringing in England. “I found a lot of roadies friendly as a kid and got interested in how everything was made to make the show.”

Riley Difford took a most intriguing path to heading up dBm Pro Audio.

When he and his team at dBm take in myriad gear like preamps, amplifiers, microphones, compressors, channel strips, musical instruments, or a whole console for repair now, Difford may flash back to the first time he got his hands dirty fixing audio equipment.

“When I was about 16, my father was building a recording studio in Sussex, South England, which some people would have known as HeliosCentric,” he says. “Elvis Costello went into partnership with my dad and my uncle and they agreed to build a recording studio in a barn. They bought a desk from Island Records, the old Helios desk [the Island Records Basing Street Studio 2 Helios console], which came in a huge truck in about 500 different boxes—literally panel by panel, fader by fader, switch by switch. It was a bit of a nightmare as you can imagine! That’s when my dad said, “We’re going to put you to work.”

Working alongside another chip off the rock royalty block, Paul Kilmister, son of the legendary Lemmy from Motorhead, Difford spent two years constructing what would become a landmark console (which now resides at Signal Corps Recording in Brooklyn). “There was a sense of fascination at the end,” says Difford. “I was like, ‘Wow. I had something to do with the end result.”

“New York Really Needs It”

Fast forward to 2020, and Difford has more than one console on his workbench. A sequence of jobs in recording studios and music publishing eventually connected Difford to the late Jim Flynn, founder of Jim Flynn Rentals, one of the three companies under the Pro-Sound umbrella. He officially joined the dBm team in 2018, and leads a talented team of techs skilled at repairing a wide range of gear from live sound to the studio.

Working out of Manhattan’s midtown on the West side, Difford feels like Pro-Sound’s repair division is perfectly situated. “New York really needs it,” he notes. “Particularly this part of Manhattan. It’s an important service with B&H, Sam Ash, and Guitar Center all around the corner. We’re right in between it all.” For the safety of customers and techs, dBm continues to be available by appointment in adherence with coronavirus guidelines.

A Total Tech Team

While Difford gets a real rush out of NYC, repair jobs come to Pro-Sound from across the country, servicing jobs from large to small from Nashville, Florida, Pennsylvania and beyond.  What keeps the orders coming in are the unique abilities of his four-man squad to take just about anything on. Like a squad of audio-centric Iron Chefs, each dBm tech wields a distinctive specialty.

Russ Crapella specializes in guitar amp repair for dBm Pro Audio.

“Russ Crapella has been doing this for 30 years: He knows guitars inside out, and he does  speakers really quick — he can see straight away what the issue is,” says Difford. “Alberto Santamaria is really a bit of a godsend with consoles: DigiDesign Profiles, Avid D-Commands, he just knows them inside out. But consoles take time, those are major repairs and obviously at the moment we’re seeing a big shift around consoles to a touchscreen/iPad control style in the manufacturing world, which is extremely interesting to see. Our team also includes the legendary keyboard specialist Lyndel Williams, and John Molinaro, digital specialist, ex-CBS Television.”

When an audio repair customer brings their gear in, the dBm techs move as quickly as possible to identify the problem. “The process is different with each tech,” Difford explains. “Russ is very precise with his method of checking speakers. He knows within the first 30 to 45 minutes of testing if a tweeter or woofer is blown, or if it’s an amp module.”

From there, timeframes for a successful repair–all audio repairs are backed by a 30-day guarantee–can range from same-day to a month or more, depending on the job’s complexity. “There’s all sorts of timeframes,” says Difford. “The thing that holds us up the most is obtaining parts. Some manufacturers are a little tricky with their process to get parts, others are not so tricky. It depends on what they have available, and if they don’t how quickly they can make it.”

Authorized Audio Repairs

dBM’s role extends beyond servicing the audio engineers, producers, artists, live sound professionals, studio owners, audio post houses and collectors that show up with their equipment and instruments. Their shop also acts as a vital conduit for myriad manufacturers worldwide, who list dBm as an authorized repair service center for their products.

It’s a relationship that instills confidence in customer and creator alike, with both sides knowing that vetted expert repair is on call, post-purchase. “If I’ve bought speakers from JBL, for example,” Difford notes, “I want to be secure in the knowledge that it’s going to be taken care of under warranty. It’s just like buying a car and knowing the dealer has certified mechanics–there’s a guarantee you can count on that’s efficient to act on. That’s really important when you’re building a recording studio or live sound business: You want the confidence that you’ll get a lot of good years out of the gear you buy.”

Currently, Pro-Sound is the authorized repair service center for a long list of top brands, including Fender, JBL, Crown, Soundcraft, Ampeg, Korg, QSC, SSL, RTW, Apogee, Electrovoice, Pioneer DJ, Yamaha, and many more . More manufacturers are constantly being added to the roster that has vetted and certified dBm for warranty repairs.

Real Relationships

As a part of the Pro-Sound family of companies, dBm is plugged into a bigger picture, also offering sales and rentals, that has always made customer service and consistency the #1 priority.

“I’ve learned a lot from Pro-Sound’s general manager, Matt Zimmerman, in my time here,” says Difford. “He’s really great with communicating with customers, being transparent upfront about what we can and can’t do for them. Yes, you can go to one of the many other retailers in NYC, but you’re usually not going to speak to the same person twice.

“We know our customers, which means if they have future issues, we can sort them out much faster. We want to make people’s lives as easy as possible so if their gear goes down, we can get them right back to work.”

— David Weiss. This article is sponsored content.

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