[sdiy] Favorite (American) Parts Suppliers

[Tim Parkhurst]

Hey Scott,

Excellent! Thanks for the list of good suppliers. I was getting sooooooooooo
tired of the "radio shack sucks / woe is me / all the good parts are gone /
DIY is dead / it's all the f***ing cell phones fault" thread!!!!

People, we live in a VERY good time to be doing DIY. Yeah, it sucks that the
3080 is going obsolete, but as CJ (Metrophage) pointed out, the tools for
DIY are getting better, easier and cheaper all the time. Yes, you can't get
CEMs from PAIA for $10 anymore; yes, you're going to have to hunt to find
good matched tranny pairs; yes, several twenty or thirty year old ICs are
being dropped by their manufacturers, but look at the AMAZING resources we
have available to us now: 

**Your average desktop computer is incredibly powerful. For about $200 (or
less), I can get a microprocessor development board, or an FPGA development
kit, or PCB layout software, or circuit simulation software, or a program
that makes nifty animated fractals, etc, etc, etc

**The proliferation of on-line stores makes finding that obsolete OTA much
easier!

**1% metal film resistors are CHEAP!!

**Ordering parts from Digi-Key or Mouser is drop dead easy! (at least for
those of us in the States)

**Schematics and manuals are incredibly easy to find now!!!

**Good used test gear is VERY easy to find on ebay or other similar sites.

**Chip for Brains has BBDs on ebay if you really want them

**Paul S has CEMs at Synthtech.com (not all of them, but a pretty good
selection)

**OTAs are still out there. You gotta hunt a little bit, but they're still
out there. 

Like I say, I think this is a GREAT time to be doing DIY. Sure, some of the
parts are disappearing, and we will have to adapt and move on. But all in
all, it is SOOOOO much easier to put a synth together now than it was in the
70s or 80s.

Now quit griping and get back to soldering up that OTA circuit!


Cheers!

Tim (the optimist in me is trying to get out and go on holiday) Servo


**********************************************************

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Stites [mailto:scottnoanh at peoplepc.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 8:43 AM
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: [sdiy] Favorite (American) Parts Suppliers
> 
> Hi List,
> 
> After my Rat Shack rant of yesterday, I figured maybe it would be more
useful to
> list suppliers I *do* like.  Bear in mind I'm situated pretty much in the
> geographical center of the contiguous 48 states, and these suppliers are
in the
> States.  Hence, the inclusion of 'American' in the subject line.
> 
 

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