Sick electronics get better here.

Dear neighbor,

Something in the house has stopped working — a TV that won’t turn on, a laptop that’s slower than it should be, a VCR that just ate its own tape. Before it goes in a landfill, it comes to my bench.

I’m Ed. I fix consumer electronics the way they used to be fixed: opened up, diagnosed, and put back together by hand — not just swapped for new. Televisions, computers and laptops, cell phones, game consoles, VCRs and DVD players, and the drives inside them. Viruses removed. Data recovered. Old tapes digitized before they’re unwatchable for good.

If it still has a circuit board in it, bring it by. If it doesn’t turn on at all, that’s usually the interesting part.

— EdMister Ed’s Fix It Shoppe

Call (202) 657-2225 Email the Shop Take a look inside → Not local? Ship it in →

What comes across the bench

Consumer electronics, diagnosed and repaired — not just swapped for new. Pick a category for pricing notes and what to expect.

See every repair we handle →

A look inside the shop

No stock photos. This is the actual bench — boards, belts, and drives, mid-repair.

Dielectric grease and hand tools laid out for a connector repair — Connector service

Close-up of board-level soldering work under bench light — Board-level soldering

MacBook opened to show its internal logic board and components — Laptop internals

Interior of an older CRT television with the picture tube visible — CRT chassis, opened up

VCR tape deck mechanism removed for belt and head service — VCR deck mechanism

Close-up of a small blue precision gear from a mechanism repair — Precision gear work

Server and drive rack used for data recovery jobs — Data recovery bench

Shelf of VHS tapes queued for digitizing — Tapes waiting to be saved

Stack of CDs and DVDs on the shop counter — Disc queue

Hands doing precision motor and gear repair work — Motor & gear repair

Wide view of a television circuit board pulled for diagnosis — TV board diagnostics

Laptop battery bays exposed during a repair — Battery service

Recent patients

A few real repairs, logged as they happened.

Aug24

DVD / VHS combo player

Came in for dead — wouldn’t recognize a disc, and the laser couldn’t traverse far enough to read the table of contents. Replaced the traverse motor with a small stepper motor from the parts bin.

Reads discs and tapes again

Traverse motor swap
Aug22

VCR

Three drive belts had turned to a sticky residue that gets on everything it touches. Replaced all three belts and cleaned the heads.

Runs clean

Belt residue, cleaned up
Aug9

Analog media transfer

A weekend of travel got me thinking about what gets lost when analog tape ages out — VHS, camcorder cassettes, home movies nobody’s watched in years. Digitizing them is half the job; the other half is convincing people to actually do it before the tape goes.

Next up for transfer
Aug2

Parts & recycling

Keyboards, mice, cords, and drives pulled from machines that didn’t make it — sorted and kept, not landfilled. If a repair can be done with a good used part instead of a new one, that’s usually the better repair.

Parts, sorted and kept

Saving what’s on the tape

VHS decays. Camcorder tape decays faster. Cassettes decay too. Every year a tape sits in a box, the odds of pulling a clean transfer off it get worse. Digitizing turns whatever’s left into a file that doesn’t age — playable on anything, backed up anywhere.

Formats handled: VHS · camcorder tape · audio cassette

Service area

Based in Anne Arundel County, Maryland — 31 towns and communities served.

Don’t see your town? Call or email anyway, or see each town’s page →

Not in Maryland at all? See how mail-in repair works → — ship it in from anywhere in the U.S.

★★★★★ recommended by Chad Vargason on Facebook

233 neighbors follow the shop on Facebook

Bring it by

Call, text, or email. Describe what it’s doing — or not doing — and I’ll tell you honestly whether it’s worth fixing.

(202) 657-2225 info@ifixsickstuff.com Full contact details →