Altman, went up and down the chain of command with them over the years including when of interest to the rental department and overall, good opinion - really good opinion if you stick with it for an answer. Even these days getting two or three calls a day about a pending order for parts that got confused but not wanted to be so in its end.
Hard to find good help, if it seems to you that the locals don’t have the quality, it’s possible they don’t, this or it’s that for the price - though not common with a follow spot, that it is not worth the price for them to service. Still think of a
PAR 56 once I gave a quote for. Needed much work including me adding a
safety screen to it before I would consider releasing it to the customer. Unfortunate how it was to not service the gear - often at a profit loss for such gear in doing it well but not paying my time spent on it, but in this case I couldn’t touch it short of making it compliant to minimum standards before I addressed why it was sent in.
This not saying that the local company had skilled labor as cited and potentially was not worse for your gear than worth investing in caring for it. Hard question and over time often only something answered. Can remember my first few repairs to 1000Q’s, lots of time and I did my best but I loved working on them and did my best, how much another person loves time spent in giving them true service is another question. Often another question in a fairly simple
fixture one with a brain towards the goals can fix and make whole again without much experience. Care and love in the 9:5 world on the other
hand can be another question.
As I remember of the last time I was inside a 1000Q,
mark the rails with a metal scribe on where stuff is located before loosening and moving them. Makes the
bench focus later easier. Perhaps even pre-bench focus than scribe. As to
Iris kit, them do wear out and while standardized parts and somewhat if detail orientated easy enough to work on or replace leafs to, probably easier in the end to replace the assembly. Can do is often not easier to do.
In the same sense, I once in a while don’t want to deal with the retail cost either thus expect that further sales will take care of some part or care on my part and it mostly does. Good doing but as opposed to posting a single contact on-line, one should leave it in’general and not
bug your contact amongst a few good people there, much less not link him and phone number to offering free gear. Just a kind of PR thing in that being the way amongst many companies in helping yet it more a company effort type thing and not something to
bug a specific person about.