[sdiy] out of print books

[Thomas Hudson]

On Sep 27, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Paul Perry wrote:
>
> So far as Amazon prices are concerned - anyone who looks only at  
> Amazon for
> books, is going to get ripped sometimes. Just go to google, put in  
> the name
> of the book you want plus 'price' and, usually you will find it for  
> less
> than Amazon.
> The 'gouging' sellers on Amazon, are usually people who wait till  
> there are
> no copies of a particular book listed, then list a cheap copy owned by
> another seller elsewhere (marking it up  five times or so) and  
> then, when it
> 'sells' on Amazon, get the actual owner to "dropship' to the buyer.
> Amazon knows this, Amazon could not give a shit about it (because  
> 1. they
> get the fees, and 2. they don't want anyone to know that there are  
> other
> places to buy books.)

As a former employee of Amazon, I can vouch for everything Paul has  
said. There are plenty of better online booksellers.

> (OK, there are no Boscorelli bargains..... but there are a dozen  
> Cookbooks
> out there for around $20 or less.
>

I have the Boscorelli book, as well as that synth book that people  
always pine for. The name escapes me, but it has mostly old Paia  
schematics. The Boscorelli book is interesting, but not $150  
interesting. Personally I think he misses the boat on guitar effects.  
He takes the approach of a complete perfectly engineered solution  
with no regard to cost, with very high parts count for most of the  
designs, and while I've never built any of his designs, I'm sure they  
do exactly what they are designed to do. But many of the "icons" of  
guitar fx are endearing because they do more with less, and have all  
these little quirks that make them less predictable.

Repeatability might have a place in synth electronics, but in guitar  
fx, it is the imperfections that lead to a sort of playability. Which  
is why most guitarists still prefer old tube amps with poor power  
supply filtering, sagging tube rectifiers, and an overall  
amplification system that mimics a weight suspended by multiple  
springs, swinging around chaotically.

Tomy, trying to keep his germanium transistors cool...