Services
What I Repair
Hands-on bench work for tube amps, synthesizers, and music electronics. If it has circuits and it's broken, I can probably fix it.
Tube Amplifiers
Retube, bias, recap, hum diagnosis, intermittent faults, and full restoration. Fender, Marshall, Vox, Mesa, boutique - all makes and eras.
Synthesizers
Vintage and modern synth repair. Key contacts, voice cards, power supplies, calibration, and component-level troubleshooting.
Guitar & Bass Electronics
Pickup swaps, rewires, jack replacement, shielding, pot cleaning, and full setups with intonation.
Pedals & Effects
Troubleshooting, switch and jack repair, component replacement, and modifications. All brands and formats.
Pro Audio & Backline
As a working backline tech, I service professional audio gear across all major brands and touring systems.
Custom & Unusual Jobs
Circuit design, one-off builds, vintage restoration, and weird projects that other shops won't touch. If it's interesting, I'm in.
Why Rudi Makes
What You Get
Real Diagnostics
Every repair starts with proper diagnosis - not parts-swapping. I trace the actual fault before I touch anything.
Direct Communication
You talk to the person doing the work. No front desk, no middleman. I explain what I find and what it costs before I proceed.
Documented Work
Every repair is logged - diagnosis, fix, parts used. You get a clear record of what was done and why.
Fair, Honest Pricing
$45 bench fee applied to your repair total. Labor billed at published rates. No surprises, no upselling.
Warranty
30-day labor warranty on all repairs. If something I fixed comes back, I make it right.
Working Tech, Not a Reseller
I'm a bench technician and backline tech - not a shop that farms out work. Your gear stays on my bench from start to finish.
How It Works
The Repair Process
From first contact to finished repair - here's what to expect.
Reach Out
Email me with what you've got and what's wrong. Include the make, model, and symptoms. I'll let you know if I can help and give you a rough idea of timeline.
Drop Off
Bring your gear to my shop in Indianapolis (by appointment). I'll do an intake and confirm the reported issue.
Diagnosis
I put it on the bench, trace the fault, and figure out what's actually going on. Then I contact you with findings, options, and a cost estimate before any repair work begins.
Repair & Test
Once approved, I do the repair, test thoroughly, and document everything. Standard turnaround is 3–7 days. Rush service available.
Pickup
I let you know when it's ready. You get your gear back with a written summary of the work and a 30-day labor warranty.
Build Log
Things I've Built
A running collection of things I've built, repaired, and engineered - from electronics to mechanical systems.
37-Key 555 Polyphonic Synthesizer 🛠 In Progress
A fully analog polyphonic synthesizer built from scratch. 37 keys, 12 hand-tuned 555 oscillators, 7 octaves via CD4024 counters, onboard fuzz, PT2399 delay, transformer saturation, and white noise on every key. Designed and built entirely by me - as a learning project, and a real instrument.
Open project- 37 semi-weighted keys salvaged from a broken M-Audio Axiom 61
- 12 × 555 timer oscillators, each tuned with a trim pot - one full chromatic octave
- CD4024 binary ripple counter per oscillator - 7 octaves each, 84 tones total
- Squarewave output + low-pass filtered sine-ish output with blend knob
- White noise on every key via shared membrane switch rail
- LM386 amplification throughout - runs entirely on 9V, no split supply
- 555 monostable LFO vibrato circuit on each oscillator
- LM386 fuzz stage with power sag control for unstable, collapsing tones
- Dual PT2399 delay module with depth and rate controls
- Transformer saturation stage - audio driven backwards through an AC transformer
- Output stage: passive compressor + 1/4" jack
Filament Bench OS 🛠 In Progress
A local-first repair shop operating system built specifically for tube amp, synth, and instrument repair. SQLite, Python, Flask. Runs on my own hardware - no cloud, no subscription, no internet required. Designed around how bench work actually happens, not how a car shop or phone kiosk works.
Open project- Full customer → unit → job → history data model with structured diagnostics per equipment type
- Real workflow states: NEW → INTAKE → DIAGNOSING → AWAITING APPROVAL → REPAIRING → TESTING → READY → COMPLETED
- SQLite FTS5 full-text search across jobs, customers, units, knowledge base, and inventory
- Structured diagnostic forms per equipment category - tube amps, synths, pedals each get different fields
- Every status transition logged with timestamp - complete audit trail on every job
- Local-first: runs on shop hardware, works without internet, data stays mine
- Phone-optimized wallboard - big text, current job counts by status, auto-refreshes every 60 seconds
- Built-in knowledge base: every interesting failure mode becomes searchable history
- Automated rotating backups: 7 daily, 4 weekly, 12 monthly
- CLI interface built before UI - fast, scriptable, testable from day one
Blu - A Compiled Programming Language 🛠 In Progress
A compiled programming language built from scratch. Blu has a full compiler pipeline, runs on Linux, produces native x86-64 assembly, and has forms, closures, file I/O, and 400 regression tests. Written because the right tool for the job didn't exist yet.
Open project- Full compiler pipeline: lexer → parser → semantic analyzer → IR → x86-64 codegen
- Compiles to native x86-64 assembly, runs on Linux
- Forms - record-like structures with named fields and type inference from usage
- Closures with proper environment capture across stack frames
- File I/O, JSON, CSV, process spawning, environment variables in stdlib
- 400+ regression tests - all required green before any phase closes
- 18-phase development plan - 5 phases complete
- Keywords: give (return), show (print), when (if) - the language has its own voice
- Style guide, development guide, phase tracker, and audit log
BASIL - Cinematic Narrative Game 🛠 In Progress
A short cinematic narrative game built in Unity 2022 HDRP. You play as Bas, a brown mouse searching for his sister Myea after a white cat named Mog separates them. 45–90 minutes. Bittersweet, restrained, quiet. Not a power fantasy. Nobody wins, but they don't lose each other.
Open project- Built in Unity 2022 HDRP - full cinematic lighting pipeline
- 19-phase production plan, fully documented with AI-assisted coding prompts at every step
- Entire narrative locked into a master canon document before any code was written
- Mog threat AI: patrol, detection, alert, hunt state machine
- RoomProgressionManager gates story beats so they unfold in the right emotional order
- Full movement controller: walk, run, crouch, climb, carry, squeeze through gaps
- Every mechanic has a symbolic purpose before it has a technical one
- Greybox-first - game plays beginning to end in rough geometry before any art begins
- Planning and design phase complete - active Unity build is next
Glorb - A Solo Card Game ✅ Complete
A single-player card game. You're trapped in the Temple of Glorb, navigating rooms, collecting four keys in order, and fighting your way through an army of Gleebs to escape. 64 cards, designed and balanced from scratch.
Open project- 64-card standalone deck - swords, chi, gleebs, keys, armor, candles, special cards
- Solitaire dungeon crawl - four directional decks represent rooms of the temple
- Collect keys 1–4 in order to unlock the escape condition
- Combat system: fight gleebs barehanded or with equipped weapon
- Weapon degradation - gleebs cap your sword's reach against weaker enemies
- Special cards: The Moon, The Sun, The King, The Magus
- Gleeb Princes can't be killed until the boss battle (except by special cards)
- Boss battle triggers when two decks remain - defeat Glorb (power 15) to escape
- Glorb can be equipped as a weapon for 2 chi - costs 2 per scene to keep
Keystone - Arena Board Game ✅ Complete
A fast-paced arena game of movement, pressure, and permanent construction. Players move across a 12×12 black-and-white grid, drawing cards based on where they land. Health is both life and currency. Towers change the map. Nothing you build protects you from the system itself.
Open project- 12×12 checkerboard grid - black squares draw Yin cards, white squares draw Yang cards
- Health is both life and currency - spent to build towers, lost to threats and combat
- Towers are permanent - stack 7 tiles and win immediately
- Dual 52-card deck system: Yin deck (pressure, damage) and Yang deck (recovery, momentum)
- Card types: Threat, Supply, Shift, Equipment, Exit
- 1–4 players, solo to competitive to cooperative
- PvP: both players roll d6, loser takes damage equal to the difference
- Ranged shooting: d6 range, orthogonal or diagonal, blocked by towers
- Optional modes: Capture the Flag, Team Score with respawn
- 20–30 minute play time
MT7902 Linux Wi-Fi Driver Patch 🛠 In Progress
An ASUS laptop with a MediaTek MT7902 Wi-Fi chip had no upstream Linux support. The driver loaded, the firmware uploaded, but the firmware version field showed placeholder garbage - the handshake never completed. This is the story of finding the wrong interrupt bit mask and fixing it.
Open project- Hardware: ASUS laptop, Ryzen 7 7730U, Linux Mint kernel 6.14, MT7902 (PCI ID 14c3:7902)
- Symptom: firmware uploads but version field reads ____000000 - handshake never completes
- Root cause: MT7921-era interrupt bit mask (BIT 27) inherited in driver base, MT7902 needs BIT 17
- MT7902 CMD TX ring fires on wfdma0_tx_done_17 - a chip-specific quirk buried in vendor source
- Found by cataloguing Windows driver package and analyzing firmware blobs with strings and hexdump
- Fix: two-file patch - regs.h constant + pci.c interrupt enable mask
- Verification: objdump to confirm patch in binary + devmem2 register read to confirm on silicon
Python Web Scraper ✅ Complete
I came into this with no Python background and a clear goal: build a scraper that could pull technical documents from hundreds of websites, organize them on disk, and never download the same file twice. This is the story of building it and what I learned along the way.
Open project- Reads a structured JSON database and systematically fetches every URL in it
- 10-method waterfall fallback: requests → httpx → Playwright → Selenium → curl subprocess
- SHA256 deduplication - hashes every file before saving, skips anything already seen
- PDF handling: pdfminer.six, pymupdf, pytesseract OCR for scanned documents
- BFS crawler with configurable depth - follows links without running forever
- Proper class design: HashRegistry, ScrapeLog, UrlProcessor, ManufacturerCrawler
- argparse CLI - target a single manufacturer or the entire database
- Simultaneous terminal and file logging with timestamps
- Runs on a Raspberry Pi without modification
TBX Home Broadcast Station 🛠 In Progress
A television station. Not a media server - a broadcast station with numbered channels, a live schedule, and the feeling of something that exists in the physical world. Built on a Raspberry Pi 5. 360 files, 320 passing tests, 17 software phases complete. Now building the hardware.
Open project- Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB RAM - boots straight to playback
- FastAPI backend + mpv playback engine via Unix socket
- Broadcast seek algorithm: tune to a channel and join mid-schedule like a real network
- React web UI - dark, amber, gunmetal - surfed with a handheld IR remote
- 7-segment front panel display, breathing power LED, amber activity LED during imports
- Channel 99: hidden game console with 6 original games sharing a universe and lore
- Cloud tier, Stripe integration, OTA update system, 48 setup wizards
- 30 CLI commands, SD card image build pipeline, Kickstarter and manufacturing plan
- ATtiny85 power controller: OFF / STARTING / RUNNING / SHUTTING DOWN state machine in 8KB flash
- 360 files, 320 passing tests, 17 software phases complete
30-Port iPad Charging Rack 🛠 In Progress
A custom 2U rack system that delivers USB-C Power Delivery charging to 30 iPads over 50-foot cable runs. 24V distribution, per-port PD conversion, 7-pin XLR interconnects, 4-pin XLR tablet outputs. Designed to actually work at distance - not just on a workbench.
Open project- 30 iPad ports in a 2U rack chassis - 5×6 grid of 4-pin XLR front panel outputs
- 24V distribution bus → 30 individual USB-C PD modules, one per port
- 50-foot cable spec: 14 AWG VBUS/GND, 22 AWG twisted CC1/CC2, overall shield
- 7-pin XLR internal harness - 15 connectors, each carrying 2 tablet ports
- 4-pin XLR tablet cables: Pin 1 GND, Pin 2 CC1, Pin 3 CC2, Pin 4 VBUS
- Mean Well RSP-1000-24 (24V, 40A, 960W) main power supply
- Per-port 2A fusing - 30-circuit fuse block
- CC lines twisted and shielded - single-point grounding to prevent ground loops
- Single-port validation test before committing to all 30 ports
FAQ
Common Questions
How much does a repair cost?
All repairs start with a $45 bench/diagnostic fee, which gets applied to your total if you proceed. Labor is billed at published hourly rates (typically $55–65/hr depending on the work), plus parts at cost + 25%. I always confirm the estimate before starting. See full pricing.
How long does a repair take?
Most repairs are completed in 3–7 business days. Complex jobs or parts-dependent repairs may take longer - I'll give you a timeline estimate at diagnosis. Rush service (48-hour turnaround) is available for an additional $35.
What brands do you work on?
All of them. Fender, Marshall, Vox, Mesa/Boogie, Orange, Peavey, Ampeg - and boutique or vintage amps of any make. For synths: Moog, Roland, Korg, Sequential, Yamaha, Oberheim, and more. If it has circuits, bring it in.
Do you work on solid-state amps?
Yes. While tube amps are my specialty, I troubleshoot and repair solid-state amplifiers too. Same diagnostic approach, same documentation.
Can I ship my gear to you?
I primarily do local drop-off in Indianapolis. For special cases (rare gear, out-of-state clients), reach out by email and we can discuss shipping arrangements.
What if my gear isn't worth repairing?
I'll tell you. If the cost of repair exceeds the value of the gear, I'll let you know upfront so you can make an informed decision. You only pay the bench fee for the diagnosis.
About
Who I Am
I'm a repair technician, backline tech, and builder based in Indianapolis. I fix amps, synths, and electronics - and I build custom projects from circuit design through final assembly. I'm comfortable taking something broken or half-formed and turning it into something that works well and lasts.
Contact
Get Your Gear Fixed
Ready to get your amp, synth, or pedal repaired? Email me with the make, model, and what's going on. I'll get back to you with next steps.
info@rudimakes.com
Also open to consulting, custom builds, and conversations about music technology.