[sdiy] The SDIY addiction

[James Patchell]

I know what you mean...people who see some of my projects ask...gee...how 
much did it cost you to build that...Oh, that, there are about $3500 just 
in materials, plus about 300 hours of labor...that is generally where the 
conversation stops...

A lot of my SDIY days may be coming to a curtailed era... (I.E...Getting 
Married)....I can already see the Gee Honey...is it ok if I send in an 
order to Advanced Circuits so I can get all the PC boards fabbed for my 
latest synth project...oh...that is about $1000....oh then $500 for the 
sheet metal...oh and the price of analog IC's is higher now because nobody 
makes them...that is going to be another $1500....somehow...I see arguments 
like that  having a snowballs chance in Santa Barbara...


At 01:45 PM 2/20/2006 -0800, Tom Arnold wrote:
>*sigh*
>
>So, I hope to be able to sell some nice things made of wood soon. :-)
>
>I kinda bought a tablesaw.  I justified this to myself for the Putney restore
>project I'm working on ( an original Putney that someone put in a very 
>non-original
>case ) and also by convincing myself that my modular needed more real 
>wood, plus
>I'm tired of those pressboard endcheeks on the Polysix and and and...
>
>Who am I kidding, I like to buy tools!
>
>For anyone who mistakenly got into SDIY to "save money"  I say "RUN 
>SCREAMING NOW!
>WAVE YOUR ARMS!  RUN MAN RUN!".  You dont get into this lifestyle ( its 
>gone beyond
>hobby for me ) to save money, you get into it because its damned satisfying to
>build something yourself and because you dont have a sailboat.  ( Whats a 
>sailboat?
>Its a hole in the water you try and fill with money... ).
>
>Thats my end-of-weekend rant.  I'm going to go try not to cut my fingers 
>off now.
>
>Oh, and on the keyboard thread a few days back.  There are some real cheap 
>non-midi
>keyboards, I got one from a place called Surplus Computers down in San 
>Jose but I'm
>sure there are other sources.  I was impressed at how well the keyboard felt (
>chinese Fatar clone ) the rest of the unit was crappy plastic and 
>uninspiring, but
>the $25 pricetag made it worth buying to tear apart.  Sure enough the keyboard
>mechanism comes right out.  Two contacts per key for velocity ( resistive
>button-type ).  Should be very easy to make a scanning circuit and nice 
>wooden box
>for...  only 4-1/2 octaves, but I figure $25+$50 for nice wood + time...
>
>--
>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org
>  - SynthGeek        -
>  - BBD Fanatic      -  "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
>  - echo evho wjxo   -    Juanita Shrugs. "What's the difference?"
>  --------------------

         -Jim
***************************************************************
http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell

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