Synclavier and Fairlight System Support Services

The purchase of these fully restored systems has always been strongly recommended and this recommendation continues, with all system configurations still available through the present.

After 24 years in business, Synhouse is now the only company in the United States providing parts, upgrades, service, repair, and support for Synclaviers and Fairlights.

These services draw upon the largest constantly-expanding NED knowledge base in the world, and a vast amount of experience in restoring the Fairlight IIx w/SMPTE/MIDI (which is the Fairlight). All projects are handled on a discretionary basis, as company time permits.

Shop rate (for work done here in Los Angeles, California): $60/hour
one hour minimum

Computer shop rate (for Mac/PC work done here in Los Angeles, California): $35/hour
one hour minimum

House call rate (for work done at the studio or home of the customer): $100/hour
one hour minimum for the housecall rate for local housecalls in the Los Angeles/Hollywood area,
housecalls under four hours will pay $25/hour travel/drive time
eight hour (per day) minimum for the housecall rate for housecalls outside the Los Angeles/Hollywood area,
plus reasonable time and travel expenses
includes the use of Synclavier/Fairlight service kit

E-mail and phone support rate: $63/hour
one hour minimum

Shipping/packing/transporting/driving and other less skilled work: $25/hour

There will be a higher rate for system diagnostics,
but this rate has yet to be determined and does not apply at this time.

Heavily discounted rates available for long-term and travel projects. Rates shown above are intended for single repairs or small groups of repairs.
All rates apply 24 hours per day, every day, and there is no surcharge for late night/weekend work.
Total project time is rounded off to the next highest hour, but done so only at the end of the project (e.g., 4:20 is billed as five hours, and 4:20 the first day and 4:20 the second day totals 8:40 and is billed as nine hours, not ten).
Synhouse does not provide referrals to other companies.
Synhouse does not sell proprietary information about systems, or provide technical training.

Many Synclavier problems, even serious hardware failures, can be located and corrected remotely over the telephone or via e-mail, Skype/webcam, with the study of e-mailed photos, or other means. Synhouse has provided this service to Synclavier customers for years, it is now offered to customers with non-Synhouse systems at the current e-mail and phone support rate. In many cases, this eliminates the need to ship the system to Los Angeles or pay for a housecall.

Please note that the system that results from such a repair or resurrection is a repaired or revived system, not a fully restored Synclavier system.

Due to the age and state of the original hardware in these systems, the restoration of smaller Synclaviers takes 100 hours on average, while some of the larger systems take 150-200 hours to complete, and all have hundreds of non-billed hours of burn-in time that follows the build process to ensure long term reliability. Any faulty or intermittent parts are replaced immediately and the burn-in testing process is repeated to ferret out any questionable parts.

The fully restored Synclavier systems from Synhouse are built from scratch, starting from an empty cleaned enclosure of the size and style chosen by the customer, and populated with the best of the best parts picked from the Synhouse Synclavier system inventory, which is the largest in the world.

The above repair labor rates do not include free parts picked from the Synhouse inventory (as the fully restored Synclavier systems from Synhouse do), so the process of doing a full, Synhouse-quality restoration on a customer-supplied system would take far, far longer than the 100-200+ hours spent building Synhouse systems, which are built only from the best of the best parts. The Synhouse systems are built only from tested good parts, not bad parts, so no time is wasted trying to find and fix problems in a dead box, and the average times stated here only include build time, not any time spent on stock work or dismantling old systems, which is done on non-billed company time.

Therefore, as always, if you want to buy a Synclavier system in the exact specification you want and you really want the best, buy it here, because it would cost far more money to bring a system bought elsewhere up to the Synhouse standard and it would still lack the guarantee that comes with a Synhouse system. If you do require repair and support services on an existing or newly purchased system, this is now available from Synhouse for the first time ever.

Studio cartage and setup/tutorial can be provided in Southern California or elsewhere at the rates shown above.

Synhouse has several different types of stairclimbing robots and can move Synclaviers anywhere, even upstairs or in and out of basements. Every effort is taken to ensure the proper handling of these very heavy and delicate systems.