How did people learn about this years ago? before the internet.

[albatross]

Hi,
Great comments, and seems to have generated interest, so I cant of been the only person to think it.

Even a car today, is full of inaccessible black boxes & parts jammed in so you can't get at them.
I really feel that 40 years ago it was much easier to get a basic technical education.

I suppose it doesnt help nowadays , when everything is surfacemount, and practically unfixable, making it disposable

Before I viewed this forum, I came across it on google looking for how to make a diy pedal board, and came across this site and became obsessed

When I first accessed this site, I didnt know whether resistors were polarised , etc..    didnt have a clue, but have built many many pedals now and have learned so much in such a short space of time... I didnt even know how to use a DMM at first but now its all easy peasy.

[Paul Marossy]

I really feel that 40 years ago it was much easier to get a basic technical education.

Yeah, that was the days before they made it so you have to have a college degree to be able to do anything. The technical trade schools seem to be a vanishing breed, too. 

[gez]

I really feel that 40 years ago it was much easier to get a basic technical education.

I was born nearly 40 years ago so wasn't old enough to have received an education then, but even compared to when I was a teenager things have taken a turn for the worse.  In terms of a career, for the average kid in the UK at the moment the sciences are about as appealing as Herpes...

[StephenGiles]

these folks are all lying.

the information was NEVER available, before the invention of the internet in 1997.

I also used to turn up at UK distributors for sound processors and just ask for the service manual or circuit diagram. That's how I got the Aphex Aural Exciter B circuit for instance. I also found some circuits purely by chance - I called on a tape recorder repair workshop near Tottenham Court Road tube in London to see if I could get my old Teac 3340 mended. The conversation moved to guitar effects and he told me he had a wadge of EH circuits in his draw which he showed me and even suggested that I get copies in a printing shop around the corner - very trusting of him, unlike a place I visited near Orlando Florida in 1991 where they were most unpleasant. Some companies in the UK would send a circuit from just a telephone request - I always put on my best assertive manner!