Useful parts score.

[TheBigMan]

A family friend used to be in the army, and said to my Mum that he had a load of old electronic bits and pieces if I was interested.  Two carrier bags duly arrived and in amongst all the rubbish that I couldn't use I found:-
A load (400+ I think) Carbon Comp resistors.  Might be good for something.
Various pots and trimpots
A couple of different tubes.  Can't think of a use for these but seeing as ZVex built the Nano with military surplus tubes I'm keeping them!
And 45 CV7112 NPN Germanium Transistors.

I'm definitely going to build a Rangemaster, dunno what else yet.  I don't like fuzz but I suppose I'll have to build a Fuzz Face or a Tonebender as well.  Just to see what all the hype is about.  

[Melanhead]

Cool! ... you gotta like free stuff! ... i had the same experience happen. A co-worker, who knew I was into building, gave me a box load of pots, resistors, and a bunch great op-amps ...

I just built him a Fatboost as a thanks ....

Unfortunately I have thousands of resistors ( Metal film, carbon film and Carbon comp ) to sort as they were all together in a bag ... at least I'm learning my color codes

[MartyMart]

Nice score !! those CV7112's are OC140's just like smallbear has, they are FANTASTIC !!!!         ( black glass with red dot at emitter ? )
Great for a "Range Blaster" and almost any "NPN" project, with a bit of
biasing  
Build an "Axis face" or "Vox Tone bender" from Fuzz central and start
smiling a lot !!!

Cheers,
Marty.

[Ge_Whiz]

Got back to work from holiday yesterday and found that a colleague had rescued something from the skip for me - a fully-functioning analogue breadboard unit, with independent variable power supplies up to +/- 20V; two +5V regulated supplies; 1Hz - 100kHz oscillator with sine, triangle and square outputs; 1P3T switch; 1k and 100k pots; 0-30V and 0-100uA meters; built-in loudspeaker. The breadboards themselves may be rather worn out, but they are designed to be easily replaceable.

What to trial first? Wobbletron vs. Phozer comparison, or my idea for a bass guitar fuzz effect?  :?

[jmusser]

I have been blessed/cursed with people bringing me their old 8 tracks, VCRs, Radios and the like to dismember for parts. There has been an awful lot of good stuff in these old hulks. The VCRs and 8 Tracks that were pre-chip era, are absolutely chocked full of stuff we use all the time. I got a fist full of 1N60 germ diodes, a few germ transistors, and a gob of the old silicon transistors we see all the time on schematics, or inside of vintage pedals, that have to be cross referenced on NTE to something modern. I pulled out a huge amount of "greenie" capacitors last night. I would guess that one day using scavenged parts will catch up with me, and I'll put together something that doesn't work, but after building probably 25 circuits since August of last year, I have not had the first problem with a scavenged component. I did have one SPST switch that was internally shorted, but not a component yet. My next goal, is to build a fuzz out of nothing but scavenged parts throughout, just to say I did it, and it worked.

[TheBigMan]

I'm thinking, seeing as I've got the carbon comps as well, about building an old school Range Master on terminal strip just for the mojo.  Like I said, I don't like fuzz but I suppose everyone has to try a fuzz face at some point don't they?

Which reminds me, must build RG's leakage tester and see how good they are.  :idea: