[sdiy] Starting Point?

Sat Oct 10 23:36:59 CEST 2020

David, I wasn't refering to your scope. Agree old scopes are cool (or 
not, they are really hot energy eaters). I'd love to have a bunch of 
them, but only to look at them and maybe show some unimportant waveforms 
so they look nice. Unfortunately I don't have so much space for storage. 
And USB scope is not my thing, I haven't used it in years.

Roman

W dniu 2020-10-10 o 22:47, David G Dixon pisze:
> 
> 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 
>> <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 <mailto: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 <mailto:Synth-diy at synth-diy.org>> wrote:
>>     >
>>     > 
>>
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