MOTM

It is sad that over the years, the price of all the MOTM electrical 
components (ICs, resistors, etc) has remained relatively stable, if not 
dropped slightly. However, things like switches, pots jacks and knobs (and 
most recently, wire) has easily doubled to tripled since I started in 1998.

There are 2 main reasons:

a) the Evil Empire that is Tyco Electronics. You may recall several years 
ago about the Tyco CEO spending $6,000 on a shower curtain.
 http://www.sptimes.com/2002/08/09/Columns/Of_greed_and_6_000_sh.shtml

Well, Tyco has this interesting policy about pricing in distribution. This 
happens EVERY YEAR. Even after the old CEO was sent to jail.

1- the bottom 5% of all Tyco products in terms of revenue, discontinue them 
with 6 week notice. Got no time to fool with them, screw it.
2 - the top 5% of the products, raise the price 10%. People need them, and 
will pay for them.
3 - everything else, raise price 5%. Why not?

For example, the PKES90B1/4 knob, which has not physically changed since 
*1964* when it first came out by Alco, I was paying $0.58ea in 1998. Today I 
got a quote from Mouser for 1,500 at $1.85ea. Are you freakin' kidding me? I 
will contact Allied, I can weasel a better price like maybe $1.28 because I 
have a friend in the sales dept :)

b) look around your studio/home. Everything is tact switches or encoders. In 
my home TV setup (Yamaha A/V receiver, Pioneer DVD, the DirecTV DVR) there 
is exactly ONE pot, on the Headphone Out jack. And that is a wimpy-assed 
ALPS pot 9mm diameter for 28 cents max cost. NKK toggle switches? Nope.

So, only 'industrial' people like me use this old-school stuff. And they 
(distribution) just keep jacking up the prices. A funny story: I had a relay 
in the electric window of my Toyota 4Runner die. It was a DPDT pcb mount, 
12V, Omron relay. Well, at the time, I was working for the Omron rep in 
Texas! So for fun I called the Toyota place and asked for the relay 
replacement cost and they said $47. The relay was in the Mouser catalog for 
$4.85 and I just ordered a free sample.

Switchcraft is no better, the jacks are slowly creeping towards the $2ea 
mark and at some point the Chinese knockoffs at 38 CENTs each are going to 
look awful good.

Paul S.
kits were shipped today, and a carload tomorrow if the rain stays away