Squandering Old Parts

[doitle]

I dont know if anyone else has had an experience similar to this but...

I work as an assistant in the lab here where I go to school. I'm an undergrad Electrical Engineer. My summer job has been doing menial things like sorting bins of resistors, capacitors, transistors, the like. Tidying up the labs and testing equipment. After researching these vintage electronics more and more I see what an absolute goldmine the lab is and how so many old parts that could bring lots of people happiness in vintage electronics builds are being squandered. We've got transistor bins going way back, thousands of super old transistors that I'm probably the first person to look at in 15 years. The capacitor bins are full of large old electrolytics, Sprague Atoms and the like. Being used as decoupling caps on simple micro controller projects and the like... :/ There is so much history it's like being in a museum in our storage closet and it will likely stay that way forever. Me being the only one to come in there and wonder at all the neat old electronics components. Think about their possible uses. I know I've seen some of the rare BBD chips and other assorted ICs in there as well. I dunno why I made this post exactly... I guess to vent a little frustration I've been feeling lately. It'd be like finding a store with tons of NOS or near NOS parts that wasn't going to sell them... or use them... They'd just sit there forever. Or be misused... Since our resistors and capacitors are not sorted by voltage or power handling only nominal value you'll see rediculous things like 5V through a resistor into an LED to ground. The resistor? A 5W Dale sandblock... Things like that.

[frequencycentral]

I feel your frustration. Probably the best thing you could do is pack all those old useless parts into boxes and ship them directly to me.

[cd37000]

Oh the wonders of ebay...

[petemoore]

  Stingey..
  I give stuff up sometimes when I'm not using it, and it doesn't belong in the trash.
  I mean literally give stuff away, for you to do with what you want, period !
  The 'thing about old caps is...without being cycled or even used, their life is probably shortened and their useful life is even shorter or...none !
  I think Rick's idea is much more sensible.
 

[Joe Hart]

You could always "swap" parts. And I don't mean to do anything unethical -- I mean, if they have a bunch of great transistors, find out who's in charge and see if you can replace the cool ones that they have with even "better" (for their use, at least) modern ones that you will supply. Wouldn't they be more interested in trading old parts with 20% tolerances for new ones with 5% tolerances? And when you do this great trade, don't forget who suggested the brilliant idea...!
-Joe Hart

[doitle]

I was definitely thinking of doing this with the capacitors. Switching them with modern ones.

Also the caps are used or more like cycled. They are put into circuits and used for a few hours every once in a while then taken back out. So they are seeing some use every once in a while and are not dead. My thinking is just that it doesn't need to be THOSE caps.

There are also a ton of carbon comp resistors just sitting in the resistor bins with all the rest.

[JasonG]

Have you talked to your teachers about that? Schools always need money and us diyer's always need parts. Maybe one of the pedal diy stores could buy some of the parts. It seems that most engineers hoard materials because " If its good why would you throw it away?" but then there is the point of surrender where " clearly some one can make better use of it." If you don't ask you will never know.
I went to tech highschool for electronics for one year and we had a parts room full of old tubes and the like , looking back at it I am pretty sure my teachers would have just given them to me but I never asked . My teachers only needed one to show how things were back in the good old days. One of my fellow students stole a random tube for his guitar amp and told me about it after he discovered his gorilla  tube tone amp was solid state.     We didn't get past calculating parallel resistance due to all of the fights and drug problems ( I don't touch the stuff) . That class quickly became a "How to get a job in the real world" class at that point we never talked about electronics at all. Those parts are still waiting to see the light of day. It never hurts to ask.

[GibsonGM]

+1   Why wouldn't they go for you giving them exact replacements, "NEW"!  And they can get rid of the "OLD JUNK"?  I think a good prof would totally understand your interest.

[JKowalski]

IMO, anything old that is unavailable or expensive today (BBDs, tubes, GE transistors, obsolete IC's) is worth getting a hold of. But anything else? Why bother? I know people say "they have mojo" and the like, but really, it's ridiculous. Older resistors have terrible tolerances and noise. Older caps have already died or will die out quickly. Old transistors mean undeveloped technology. Worse performance. Again, IMO, they truly are "old junk", as gibsonGM sarcastically said.

You are gonna get the same exact sound, but your going jump through hoops trying to perfect a circuit with outdated and inferior components.

Of course, I don't condone so much material going to waste, but I just wanted to point that out.



Having said that, I also wanted to focus of the electrolytics - electrolytics are already the most poor performance components out there even new, and since a lengthy lifespan will just lower their performance considerably, I truly see no point even touching them.

[aziltz]

NO ONE WILL MISS THEM!!!

[JKowalski]

NO ONE WILL MISS THEM!!!

I am sure that's the case! 

[aziltz]

i grabbed a bunch of stuff from my old institution.  nothing of any value, but then the machine shop manager gave me a big box of 12AX7's and workalikes!

[Dai H.]

unless they're teaching courses in better mojo, (I agree with the above that) they probably don't give a hoot

[doitle]

I'm sure they would never miss them and they will be there forever but I can't just take them. I'd feel horrible about it for the rest of my life. When my favorite professor comes back from vacation in Poland I might ask him about some of the more vintage parts and see what he thinks about them.

[bbmonster]

Too bad you couldn't suggest an elective class for the study of vintage parts affecting sound through guitar effects pedals and comparing them to their modern counterparts. Somehow I imagine such a class where 10% of the time is spent breadboarding the circuit and the other 90% everyone jamming out riffs.