[sdiy] Newbie Bragging

[Chris CROSSKEY]

It mus be Christmas Break, PAIA have a very well deserved reputation for 
excellent customer service...... they've shipped out individual resistors to 
me in the UK when I had a missing part..... all I wanted to know was if  it 
was OK to replace a carbon they should have supplied with a rather 
over-specced meteal film that I had lying around in the right value......


chrisc

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Franko" <franko at ix.netcom.com>
To: "Synth-Diy at Dropmix. Xs4all. Nl" <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 11:31 PM
Subject: [sdiy] Newbie Bragging


> Okay, I realize this isn't much for most of you, but this is the only 
> place
> I can brag about this!
>
> I decided a few months ago that I really would like eventually to build my
> own analogue synth. My soldering skills were rusty (like 30 years since I
> soldered anything), and I don't know much about practical electronics,
> except theoretically (I'm a mathematician). So I decided that the PAIA
> Theramax was a good place to start, but that even that was beyond me a few
> months ago. I decided that before tackling that I would get some of the
> small Velleman kits to hone my soldering skills. Over the last two months
> I've had lots of fun building 8 small Velleman kits. After building the 
> last
> kit I decided I was ready to tackle the Theramax.
>
> A week ago I began putting the kit together. Finished it yesterday and 
> tried
> to tune it. Tuning the pitch oscillators went very well, but I couldn't 
> tune
> the volume oscillators. I was suspicious when I put the kit together that
> one of the volume oscillators was faulty because it didn't respond the way
> the others had to conductivity tests (I test every solder joint after it's
> soldered in because I still don't trust my soldering skills). Luckily when 
> I
> realized I might need a replacement as I was putting the kit together I
> ordered a couple of replacements from Mouser. I'm still a little
> disappointed with PAIA over this, as I couldn't raise them by phone and
> there has been no response to three emails (I know, though, this is
> Christmas vacation and hope they eventually respond at least to one of my
> emails). In any event, I desoldered what I thought was the bad oscillator,
> and soldered in the replacement from Mouser. Fired the Theramax up again,
> and was able to tune both sets of oscillators. Did all of the diagnostic
> tests outlined in the directions, and everything is working well.
>
> I'm so proud of putting this first piece of analogue equipment together
> myself. I know that this is a pretty easy kit for most of you, but it's my
> first and hopefully not my last.
>
> Looking forward to more DIY stuff this new year.
>
> Happy New Year to you all...
>
> Joe
>