Question about good and bad parts?

[campj0le]

I have the working perfboard for my power supply and actually put a CB component variable resistor on it so that I can change it from 9V to 18V depending on the type of pedal that I use, pretty crafty(HAHA) Anywho, now that I have the working prototype, I also checked on a scope to see if there was any noise on the circuit and there was minimal - yeah for me. I bought all the components at radio shack and they were a total of $11.52.

Now for the question:
What is the difference between the parts at radio shack compared to the parts at say Mouser. Besides cost and convience? What do you look at on the spec sheet that makes one part better than the other. Operating temp, materials used, feedback, leakage.

Any help on this is appreciated and will be rewarded with my gained knowledge and appreciation. Thanks in advance!!!

[Sic]

"Any help on this is appreciated and will be rewarded with my gained knowledge and appreciation. Thanks in advance!!!"

well said!

my only experience with radio shack parts compared to somewhere else is the fact that alot of the radio shack parks fall apart... also this weekend i bought a package of various npn transistors... they were acutally mixed with pnp ones too =/

[petemoore]

If you want J201's mouser or Small Bear is your best bet.
 RS has lower gain MPF 102's...sometimes it doesn't matter.
 They have 'regular' Opamps, I've come to prefer the high precision ones since TI sent us free parts...OH Thanxz again to Texas Instruments for the wonderful service and outstanding chips@@@
  There's a thread about RS stuff, if you like parts or money avoid them whenever possible and order through Small Bear Or Mouser Or etc.
  I think some of their stuff's ok, N/P with the molded stiff battery clips, they're seriously reducing their stock of stuff I like that they had, but at least I've trained them NOT to try selling me a sell fone 1!!
  Perfboard and solder I think work fine, I'm no coniasseur, their soldering tips are like butter, I put one in a few days ago and two builds later the tip is about to 'hook', more than half way through already...that's the 6th tip in that iron...where can I get a better pencil screw in tip like for RS 15w soldering iron
 Pots are big, and the shafts are made for remote control or something...3'' long, I can hank em off with wire cutters in about 12 seconds!!!

[Peter Snowberg]

Given the large number of parts out there that's a hard question.

Radio Shack sells cheap stuff. At Mouser you can choose cheap or expensive stuff.

Pedals don't stress components the way some other applications do. For instance there's no need to have military temperature range parts in a chorus pedal.

Radio Shack sells small quantities and has to charge a bundle because of it. That's capitalism in action. Some of the parts they sell are the same ones you can get at Mouser and DigiKey. For instance.... even though they're cheapies, I like Xicon film caps (the green chicklet looking ones).

For caps I like silver-mica and Xicon mylar film caps. Some electrolytics sound better than others, but it depends on the application. Tantalums sound different after distortions and they don't have as short of a lifespan as electrolytics. I've only seen tantalums go bad after abuse. I've replaced LOTS of bad electrolytics over the past 20 years.

When it comes to resistors, I like 1% metal fils for lower noise but I still use 5% carbon films too because I have a lot of them around.

For opamps, I like the NE5532s because of low noise, high drive, and low impedance outputs that can handle being shorted out without problem. I like them much better than 4558s of all flavors. Some circuits just want JFETs and for those, TL072s are fine for me although there are a zillion higher porformance opamps out there.

Most parts have their ups and downs in one way or another. There's a HUGE variety of parts that will work just fine in 99% of situations.

How's that for an non-answer answer.

Take a look at the stock list at http://www.smallbearelec.com Steve's stock is both cheaper than Radio Shack and it's totally taylored to pedal builders. He's got the right stuff.

Take care,
-Peter