Ouch
 

So, I broke my church's Z1U yesterday. We use a mini to xlr transformer for the wireless mics. It sticks out a good 6 inches on the right. I was carrying it and some other stuff and didn't clear the door frame. (note to self, don't hurry when carrying around expensive cameras)

It pushed in the xlr jack, breaking the support screw from the rear side, pushed out the little control panel up front, and rendered the external audio unusable (and me with 5 interviews yet to record). They are being very kind to me, showing God's grace and all.

Any suggestions on good Sony repair places in the Dallas/Fort Worth area? They want to take the camera on a missions trip leaving July 4th.

Photos, Phil? Not just to satiate our morbid curiosity, but to genuinely share your pain.

Contact ECI in Dallas. If they can't service it, they'll know who can.

Ya know, I didn't think to take any. And I was doing stills at lunch. Oh well.

There's no gore, just a bad bruise and some swelling. :-)

ECI? I think that's a second recommendation for them. Hopefully they can do it quick. Don't think it will be hard - just replacing the broken parts, which appear to be a relatively isolated sub assembly.

I've always sent it back to Sony for repairs

@Pete:
How long did it take?

A long time, like over a month, they charge an arm and a leg, but I don't know or trust anyone locally to fix it. this stuff is very specialized. I once tried to replace a part on my vx2000 and I drop a tiny screw into the inside and it stopped working. They are infuriating to work on. I recently had to clean the heads on my vx1000 and almost gave up trying to get the cassette door back on. When our program gets money we will send the vx2000 in for repair to Sony. There is a section on their web site that deals with repairs you can talk to them over the phone about it.

Don't try this at home, kids.
 

OK, here's your camera damage pics.

Wow - rough luck Phil, sorry to hear about that. When I tape our performances I need to use a "turnaround" on the XLR cable to connect to a female house XLR. When I put that on the Z1 and it stuck way out I just didn't feel comfortable, so I moved it to the other end of the cable... it just looked like it would be very easy to break something with the turnaround barrel sticking out so far from the camera.

Pete, Sony handles consumer cameras like the VX-2000 completely differently from their pro gear (which includes the Z1). Happily I've never had to use their repair service, but others here have reported pretty speedy service. The website and phone numbers are also different for the two product lines. Here's contact info for their pro equipment service: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/service...ocations.shtml

Good luck with everything. Hopefully others will now be aware of the potential for damaging their camera. Let us know how it all works out.

Try Video One Repair...
 

http://www.videoonerepair.com/

These guys are really good and they offer a full 6 month parts and labor Guarantee. I just sent in my 2 Z1Us to them, 1 needed a simple cleaning the other needed the lens assembly replaced. They got both done and the camera back in like 1 week... but then about 3 weeks later I had another problem pop up so I sent it back to them and they basically had to completely rebuild the camera to fix it.. no charge!

So I highly recommend them


Brett