One Question (Fry's Electronics) and one warning (Sort of. About the FAB Echo).

[CodeMonk]

First the warning. Not really a warning, but something to make note of to those that did the delay speed mod on the FAB Echo. Or maybe any FAB Echo user, modded or not.
I modded one for a local guitar store owner.
He gigged with it this past weekend.
Worked great he said, then after awhile it started squealing. He said he thought maybe the battery was low.
So I went about trying to see.
Set up a little voltage sag circuit (10k pot in line with the battery terminal (+ or -, I forget ).
So, when the voltage drops to somewhere between 4.5 and 5 volts, the FAB Echo does squeal. And a nasty squeal it is. I don't think the mod had anything to do with it. I set the delay speed pot to the value of the original resistor (2.2k I think? or was it 6.2k?), and it did the same thing.
I never had that problem myself cause I use a Spot 1 power supply for my pedals.
But I would like to have someone else test this theory out and confirm it please.

Now to the question.
We are getting a Fry's Electronics in my area soon (my area being about 50 miles away, I live in the desert in the middle of f***ing nowhere).
Opinions on them for DIYer's?


Thanks

[MusicAudio]

Yikes about the echo!

The Fry's in my area has some good stuff that you can't find at the shack, but most of it is very overpriced. It's a good place if you need and IC in a pinch (I just bought a binary counter yesterday). I'd stray from buying resistors and caps from Fry's, they sell caps in packages of 2 for $1.50....ouch. I'd say, in summary, better than radio shack but much worse than stocking up on parts that you think you might need from online stores.

[the recluse]

I don't know if this helps or not, but I have a delay that that is based on the PT2399 (BYOC, Rebote, whichever) which squeals like you describe when the battery starts to go. 

[CodeMonk]

Yikes about the echo!

The Fry's in my area has some good stuff that you can't find at the shack, but most of it is very overpriced. It's a good place if you need and IC in a pinch (I just bought a binary counter yesterday). I'd stray from buying resistors and caps from Fry's, they sell caps in packages of 2 for $1.50....ouch. I'd say, in summary, better than radio shack but much worse than stocking up on parts that you think you might need from online stores.

Thats the same price the 2 Radio Shack stores near here (near here being 30 miles away) sells their caps for.
Theres a Place a bit farther away (about 60 miles) that has a far better selection and price than Radio Shack, called Sandy's Electronics ( http://www.sandyselectronicparts.com/ ). Yesterday as I was buying some LM386 (N3's) and MPSA13's, and some other stuff, I noticed this box near the counter for $9.95. It was a selection of resistors, 5 each for every value (or damn near every value) from 1 ohm to 1 meg. The cool thing was each value was in its own baggie with a label on it listing the value in the bag. And they were all sorted in their own little folder (kind of like a miniature filing cabinet. Like 1 ohm - 5ohm in one folder , 470k - 1meg in another folder etc.). It was kinda cool, so of course I bought it.
One of the people there at Sandys was the one that told me about Frys coming to town.


And to the recluse, yes that is VERY helpful. It tells me that it may be a characteristic of the chip as opposed to something else.

Thanks

[slacker]

The squeal is most probably because the PT2399 is powered by a 5 volt regulator, once the battery voltage drops too low the regulator won't be able to do its job properly and the chip won't be getting the correct voltage.
I'd guess the squeal is caused by something funny happening to the clock frequency that makes it drop into the audio range.

[mdh]

Regarding Fry's, I would be sort of surprised if a new store carried much in the way of components.  The one that I sometimes go to in Sacramento has an area with mostly NTE components, which are terribly over-priced, and they don't really seem to restock it.  They do seem to restock Hammond enclosures (but again, the in-store retail prices on those things are brutal), wire, soldering supplies and some test equipment.

[CodeMonk]

Well, being that this other place (Sandy's) seems to be going downhill a bit (a lady there told me the owner just has the store as his hobby and doesn't much care about it anymore), Fry's may become my only local choice in the near future.
And they as well seem to favor NTE components
I bought a hammond enclosure there a few weeks ago for $10.95. Looked it up on mouser a few days later and they sold the same enclosure for $6.96 (for 1, $5.80 for 10, etc.)