[sdiy] stocking my diy synth parts draw

[anthony]

I would go to eBay and check out the seller railsideLLC and buy 1% metal 
film reisistors for $0.01.
He only likes to sell in 100pc quantities, but this is good. He's great 
about combined shipping.

I got 300 x 100K and 100 x 200K and the shipping was $7.50, for a grand 
total of $11.50 for 400 resistors.

The rate goes up after 400 or 500 resistors I can't remember which.

I'd recommend getting 100 ea of the following:

100 Ohm
1 kOhm
200 kOhm (if you will be doing a lot of R2R work)

200 or 300 of:
10 kOhm
100 kOhm (I never buy 49.9 kOhm resistors I use 2 100k in parallel)


this is not all you'd need, but you can buy smaller quantities from other 
sellers for a bit more.
These are just the values I use a LOT of (just off the top of my head).

Now: capacitors!

Jameco or Jimpak, whichever has a "mylar capacitor grabbag"
But I get them and they are chock full of polystyrene, polypropylene, many 
are 3% or even 2%.
You take your chances, but I have about 15 0.1 uF, 100V axial polystyrene, 
maybe 30 6.8 nF G polypropylene...
You get the idea. That's the beauty of it: you DO get a LOT of the same 
value, I have probably 100 totally generic 470 nF 250V yellow axial mylar 
caps, that are nothing special, but appear to be of good quality. Same for 
the many many 100nF yellow axial mylar caps.

I don't know what it is about yellow axial film caps that I like, but I 
LIKE. Especially when they're 100nF ones.

Anyway, each grabbag is about $8 and I've bought about 3 or 4.

Really, hit pawn shops for cheap old radios. Usually the older the better.
Apart from the grabbags I've never had to buy a capacitor in my life, except 
for electrolytics. But even "new" electrolytic caps are a gamble. Other 
people say it's a no-no, but using electro's from old gear from the 80's or 
90's is usually OK, except for power supply filter caps and high voltage 
caps. Caps in gear that has sat unused can be worse in gear that's seens 
regular use. But as far as buying new goes, I stick to 
Matsushita(Panasonic), Rubycon, Elna and Nichicon; roughly in that order. 
(I'm not talking about high-end audiophile types.) Oh and Illinois Caps are 
really good, I have epoxy-sealed 22uF & 47uF ones that are over 35 years old 
that still work near perfectly.

Old CD players, particularly high-endish types often are a treasure trove of 
film caps. Often just mylar, but good mylar. Old tape decks too - ones with 
Dolby always have good film caps... Old tube gear can often yield nice 
oil-filled caps and funky waxy-coated paper caps that leak, but often sound 
good anyway.

I've been scrounging parts from stuff for over 20 years. It's a hard-to-beat 
method of having a well-stocked bench. Apart from my 1% film purchases, I've 
never had to buy many resistors of the normal 5% type, although I do 
occasionally buy the big variety pack from Radio Shack.

I don't throw any type of resistor away, so I have all sorts of funky carbon 
comp, 1/2 watt, 1/8 watt, 5 watt, 10 watt, 50 watt, WHAT?

I have some 400 MOhm resistors that came out of a laser printer that look 
like big film caps.

Did I mention I like to scrounge? Sometimes I'll decide to throw something 
away and then I decide to have a peak inside first and - oh! - 4 vintage 
Mullard EL84's! - in a sweep generator from a TV repair shop?

God wanted me to make some tube amps...


aa



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ahlist" <ahlist at gmail.com>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:46 PM
Subject: [sdiy] stocking my diy synth parts draw


> Does anyone have advice on an initial stocking of diy synth parts? So
> far I've made many small orders as I've found parts I need. Does
> anyone know of anyone selling a nice lot/set of parts that would be
> good to have? I would like to have on hand common things I'll need as
> I delve deeper into creating things.
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