Ron,

If it is something major I send it to Sportsmans repair in Wisconsin. Chuck Brod knows his stuff. The turn around time is usually 2-3 weeks as they repair many reels. There business is reel and trolling motor repair.
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Recently we had Dick Benham speak at a meeting. He is from the west side , I believe. He is limited on parts though as I gave him an Abu that needed a few simple parts and he ended up sending it to the abu garcia.

I sent my Calcutta 401 TE's to this guy about a month ago and he did a great job. I got the bearing replacement done, he recessed my power handles,fixed an anti reverse issue and cleaned one of the reels for about $75. I asked him to clean the other TE but he opened it up and said it looked fine and it didn't need to be cleaned. He was very good at communicating with me and was very honest and fair. It took about two weeks to get my reels back.

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yea 75? thats incredible, unless he is replacing parts and the reel is already an expensive reel.

As Tim said, we had Dick Benham at our last meeting to give some pointers on reel cleaning/ lubing. I think he's a little out of date on some of the muskie stuff though. That being said, I sent my Calcutta B to Richard Schmitz known as "Pikemaster" on Muskies First board. He cleaned, lubed, replaced a bad drag washer, replaced a broken screw for the sideplate and sent it back to me. I paid shipping to get it to him. He did all that work and shipped it back to me for $23. From the time I dropped it off at the post office to the time he called me saying it was done was 4 days.

I do my own work on my muskie reels. If I didn't I would send them to Ron above! (That's a great deal.) In case this info is helpful to my fellow Abu owners…..

Let's see, so far I have 8 muskie rods all with Ambassadeur 4000, 5000 or 6000 series reels. Abu's website has downloadable exploded diagrams and I get my parts online from Hatterass Outfitters. All of my reels are "upgraded" with least Smooothie drag washers and new handles. One or two reels have second bearings added and I'm planning to speed one reel up with a different size gear. I have replacement pawls on hand for each reel (the pawl is the little part that tracks thru the worm gear. If your line is stacking to one side of your spool as you reel in then your pawl is worn down. If you don't have a replacement, "flip" your worn pawl for a temp fix. Pawls always fail sooner or later.)

Hatterass Outfitters caters to surf fisherpeople, long distance casters types, and they have all kinds of cool "reel candy" for Abus. Go to their site and check out how out of hand you can get tricking out your reel.

I don't know diddly about other types of reels.

Ron's worked on some of mine and does great work. Beats having to pay to ship them that's for sure.

For that price what do you want him to do? just fix a reel or end up digging a big a$$ pong on your property!!!!