[sdiy] Where is the DIY spirit? was: Filters

[Paul Schreiber]

I will offer another view :)

There are 2 levels of DIY'ers, and the difficulty in offering advice is that no one knows for
sure what the expertise level is of the newbie.

Many new DIY'ers have a VERY limited budget (ie student). It is tempting for them to get
schematics off the web that are 20-25yrs old and 'start building'.

MYTH #1: DIY electronics is a CHEAP hobby.

What happens is somebody looks at a schematic and says to themselves: "Hey! I can build this for
only $10!" In most cases, you underestimate (both time and money) by a factor of 5. The 'raw'
electronic is only 20% of the cost. The panels/pots/jacks/power supply/case/CV source greatly
overshadows. Ask JH if he is 'saving money' building Synthi clones. He is if he values his free
time at $3/hr :)

PROBLEM #1: 75% of the old schematics are useless

Parts don't exist. You substitute and get strange results.

The kit advantage AS A STARTING PLACE is that (assuming the kit designer knows what they are
doing) the kit WILL WORK. It has parts or parts lists that are easy to get (like EFM). Yes, in a
'purist' sense it reduces to a 'soldering exrecise' but if you CAN'T SOLDER, how in the world can
you build on perf board? And then you get tech support.

Now, there is the issue of 'DIY advancement': will the newbie move from kits to perf board? I
argue there is a much more likelood if you build several kits successfully. Think of the number
of power/ground connections in a small monosynth (200, maybe) Miss ONE, no workie. In a kit, this
'burden' is lifted (still plenty of room for errors).

As a rule, newbies lack test equipment to troubleshoot a non-working design, kit or otherwise. It
has been my experience that 99.5% of all kit errors are solved by INSPECTION. The average time it
takes me to spot a MOTM error in a returned kit is under 20 seconds (of course, I know exactly
where to look). On a perf board, the possibilities quadruple.

I can't think of a more frustrating experience than spending 40 hours soldering up a perf board,
and it doesn't work. For old-timers, this is 'expected' and we just whip out the Tek scope. For a
newbie, where you look? What can you do?

If you REALLY want to understand a circuit, you have to troubleshoot broken ones. But let that be
after 3 or 4 success stories :)

I agree the SSM2040 sounds the best. And you can get the JH designed MOTM-440 that has that sound
(and more).
See www.synthtech.com/motm

Paul S.