Confused About Which Resistors I Need

[dreadlocks1221]

Thanks for all the tips, I've already made the first beginner mistake

I still think the best advice is to measure each component one final time with a meter before you solder to the board

Does it matter where the components are made/shipped from? I noticed these are coming from Thailand and I'm wondering if buying from different websites/countries would make a significant difference?

I doubt it...the only difference will be price. for our purposes, if you use a component close enough to what is called for, that's cool enough.  Btw...don't know what country (I'm US) you're in, but Tayda ships all my orders from the US now. I get em in 7-10 days

I'm in the US too and I ordered it shipped via DHL and the tracking information said it came from thailand

[LucifersTrip]

I'm in the US too and I ordered it shipped via DHL and the tracking information said it came from thailand

that's possible if you ordered some more obscure items that may not be in stock at a US warehouse?
either way, curious how long it takes...

[PRR]

> how many build errors stem from the builder misreading the color coding on resistors

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!

> purple band was dark enough that it looked black in the lighting I was using.

Won't tell you what to do, but in *general*: have a 100 Watt _incandescent_ at the bench. 4-foot fluorescents are better for shadow-free lighting in small projects, pig-tail CFLs save electricity, but the best of these have major gaps in the visible color spectrum. Mark's seems to be faint in the purple zone. Incandescents cover ALL colors. While they are going out of style, basic 100W lamps are around for another year, and 80W "equals 100W!" halogen are just as good for several bucks more.

In my old lab I had huge skylights. They dripped rain and let wasps in, but I did have great full-color light most of the day. That's fine for a day-job, not for night-owls.

And agree that anything smaller than 2W the stripes get kinda thin (or maybe eyes get old). As with many things in electronics: you buy bigger than the electrons absolutely need, when it is more practical. Stomp-boxes would run on #32 hook-up wire, but it breaks, so we use #26-#22. A given resistor may "need" 0.0013 Watts, but 1/8W is tough to handle, 1/4W better, my last lifetime buy was all 1/2W for my fat fingers. (Also I built stuff bigger than a pedal, how I know about 225W resistors.)
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> keep things in an anti-static bag do I need to worry about that

The bag is a resistor to drain static charge.

The resistor is a resistor and drains its own static charge just fine.

You could imagine a lighting-bolt static charge into a 1/16W resistor, and it would die, sure. But if you have lightning-bolts flying around your house, it's not the 10-cent resistors I'd fret about. We only worry about silk panties on wool chairs, not rubbing vast clouds together.
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> I'm really more about the quality to price ratio

You and all the factories who make consumer goods, the reason good resistors are so easy to get. Yes, price is the bottom line, but resistors that crap-out in 89 days, or do bad things to sound/images, are a major drag and warranty-expense. And while a 5-year battery can be timed-out to die on schedule, a resistor either fails right away or out-lives the equipment (unless you smoke it in a higher-powered circuit or an accident).

Do be wary of the too-good deals. Many are legitimate, but there ARE factory-rejects and there are people who scarf-up rejects and sell them shamelessly. Also a fair number of carbon-film being sold as "metal film". (And 2% being sold as "1%", but that usually won't matter.)

[Mark Hammer]

I won't get into how many times I have come to work wearing one black sock and one dark blue sock!   

ALWAYS helpful to have a decent light source when accurate colour identificaton is critical.

[greaser_au]

Antistatic? No, resistors and capacitors shouldn't really matter, though capacitors could theoretically get hurt by static.

Interestingly,  when I had my first introductions to ESD handling procedures in the electronics factory nearly 30 years ago, images of 1k metal film resistors with holes blown in the  film were the majority of the demonstrative content...  The gist of the content was that, in general terms, it's best to try to avoid static damage by proper handling procedures with EVERYTHING,  that way you don't forget it when you absolutely should do it  

I know these guys are trying to sell their resistors, but...     http://www.vishaypg.com/foil-resistors/videos/?video=3

david