[sdiy] Starting Point?

[David G Dixon]

Roman, you're probably right about digital vs analog scopes, but the old Tektronix scope is cool, and it was free.
 
I also have a Picoscope, which is a little USB probe that plugs into a computer and runs off of software.  That is also very useful, as it has spectrum analysis -- I use it when calibrating sines to minimize THD, and also when calibrating multipliers to minimize carrier bleed.  That was also free -- Danjel van Tijn gave it to me as a birthday present many moons ago.

  _____  

From: Synth-diy [mailto:synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org] On Behalf Of Roman Sowa
Sent: Friday, October 09, 2020 11:23 PM
To: synth-diy at synth-diy.org
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Starting Point?


[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email] 

Totally agree.

What may not seem so obvious, there's a catch - when you can afford all the fancy tools you dream of, then suddenly your creativity drops down the floor. With crappy tools you have to be more creative and think, imagine, explore, experiment. For example soldering - you have to learn how to solder anyhow, and cheap soldering iron is not forgiving, so it will force you to think what you're doing and be totally aware of what to do in certain situations. I have bought my first temperature controlled station about 20 years after I started soldering. Only because of that I could appreciate it. In case you wonder, yest it's possible to succesfully solder SMD with transformer soldering gun.


The scope is essential, I think even more than multimeter, but today you can buy small toy scopes for below $100. And frankly they are better than big 50kg scopes I had in school. I have quite a few of those toy scopes, this is my small addiction, so if you want to ask about specific model, I probably have that. Don't buy "best scope you can afford", or "scope planned for the future". Those times are over. Now there's new scope coming every year, cheaper and better than others. After 2-3 years you'll know what to look for, and it will be more GAS hitting than real measurement needs. 


It is very unpopular point of view here, but I think modern digital scopes are much better that vintage analog Tek.


Roman


W dniu 2020-10-10 o 01:49, Peter Pearson pisze:


While I agree that spending $1k will definitely get you set up, we aren't all so lucky.  Especially when we're spending money made mowing lawns or working minimum wage as a youngster.  What I meant was that a quality iron will really make the biggest improvement.  That plus an "it works fine" multimeter and a working 20MHz oscilloscope used is almost all you need (less parts but that's subjective) to do some damage.  Take the price point down from $1k to something more like $200-$300 or less and that's attainable for a lot of people. 

Something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicV3Z6XLFA


BUY USED!

You can work up to a $10k oscilloscope or whatever once you need one.

On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 7:36 PM Benjamin Tremblay via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:


I learned this stuff as a kid through trial, error, burned fingers, and Radio Shack.  I never had more than ten or so dollars on hand, so no voltmeter, no breadboard, no spools of wire. I remember building the basic 556 “Atari punk console” circuit and just thinking it made horrible noises nobody would ever want to hear.
After building light-controlled oscillators for a year, I started checking out books at Colorado State University. The ancient books were the best: Musique Concrète and this book written in Spanish from the 1940s showing how a film loop generating optical pulses going into a modulator circuit could be what we call a drum machine. My mother told me about the Telharmonium in Worcester MA she read about in Yankee Magazine. I built a Theremin using an oscillator and an AM radio, and realized it would be easier to master the violin than to get a melody out of a Theremin. Then I found the 1970s books from UCLA on what we now call West Coast Synthesis. When I got to the log tables in the middle of the book I knew I couldn’t follow it; if music was math, music was not for me. 
It took a couple of years of futility to realize I had to try again.
Paia was so inspirational, yet at the same time I felt the kits were full of design compromises that left me in the dark about best practices. (I remember testing the Gnome after my brother put it together and we both thought it was broken; but it was just the T filter doing its crappy T filter thing.)
Then I was gifted a broken Paia Proteus when I was a junior in high school. Fixing that beautiful machine gave me a new appreciation for Paia.

Paia turned me onto Don Lancaster and Craig Anderton (as editor of Electronic Musician). 
After I got my hands on the books by Bryce Ward and Barry Klein, I really wanted to do this stuff, but I had no way to earn a living, and neither the math nor the music.

How long does one have to live before you just start doing what you love? 

Benjamin Tremblay

> On Oct 9, 2020, at 6:53 PM, Benjamin Tremblay via Synth-diy <Synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> 
> 

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