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

[harry]

Dammit Paul... if you offer reasonable advice, how can I flame you ???

Go ahead, say something about POLITICS....

"make my day"

H^) (dirty) harry

Paul Schreiber wrote:

> 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.

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