Upgrades are really best if this is done by someone who's familiar with our stuff, or who is a technician who's going to take responsibility if something goes wrong. Because, if something goes wrong--if the upgrade doesn't work for some reason, or some part of the product goes dead, etc, literally the only thing we can do is say, "Send it back to us, we'll take a look and fix it." This means you'll be paying shipping anyway, plus installation charges, plus any necessary repairs. We've had some pretty incredible stuff come in for repair, including a Mjolnir where the MOSFETs were removed by drilling the screws out of the chassis and the potentiometer (a 4-gang Alps RK27) was sheared in half when the guy ripped the board out. This required replacement of metal and many components to make right.
Also, very importantly: legally, all of our gear reads "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE." The moment we start invalidating that by saying, "Sure, go ahead and do it yourself," we've opened ourselves up for all sorts of amazing dates with legal-type people. Some of which might end up taking the company down, after someone decides to do the upgrade...while the product was plugged in...while sitting in the bathtub. So please excuse me if I err on the side of caution.
With respect to warranty, as a totally separate question, if we receive a product back for warranty service that is unmodified, not abused, within the warranty period, and is owned by the original purchaser, it's not like we're not going to cover it. You know, standard warranty stuff. Again, we get some incredible stuff back for warranty repair, like the Ragnarok that just came in that was full of Dr. Pepper. We ended up doing that under warranty, because after a thorough cleaning, it worked fine. However, that could have easily ended up being a very, very expensive repair (complete board replacement). No mention of the spill, just "it stopped working."
