how much money have you spent on your DIY'ing

[Brian Marshall]

It all started for me when i was sick of all the crappy effects i owned, and i decided i would try building a tweak-o.  

It was a pain in the ass.  The worst part was i didnt even like it.  I already knew a lot about electricity from my job, and a little from my dad who was an electronics engineer at intel for years.  

I built a few more little projects, but usually bought as much as i could at radio shack, mostly stuff for my studio.

then last year i bought and ADA MP-1 off ebay, and it didnt work.  I ended up replacing most of the opamps in it, and eventually tracked the prolem down to a bad electrolytic cap.  Through all of this i really hoaned my soldering skills, and decided it was time to try designing my own stuff.

As of right now i have spent about $150 on books i have tracked down, and have about $500 worth or parts sitting here at my house.  I have also killed 2 soldering irons by leaving them pluged in for waaaaay too long.

Once i sell a few pedals next year i hope to to buy an oscilloscope.

Brian

[Ansil]

thats a loaded queston..   shit i have spent in the thousands i know over the amount of time i have been building all sorts of things.  when i started doing remote controlled hovercrafts as a kid.   but when i started salvaging parts it got alot better.  


shoot i am buidling a pedal right now. that i forgot the old pcb is one i will have to tweak to get everything on it i want. but you know what it is the sound that drives. me.   not the building. i woudl rather kick back and just design and have someone else do all the monkey work.  lol.  but then again i have to build some of this stuff. or i would lose my crediblity

what little i seem to have lately. lol

[Brian Marshall]

yeah, i have been thinking lately that i need to build a bunch of small circuit boards with common circuits on them  (like a voltage devieder so i can hook it right up the perf board.  

I dont really like salvaging stuff.  that seems more of a pain than it is worth.  although i did tear appart a small protable stereo the other day, and kept the speakers, transformer, and a few other things, but how much time is it going to take me to desolder all those resistors, and cerampic caps... I'd rather be designing something.

[javacody]

I've spent over $100 on ebay buying lots of transistors, JFETs, MOSFETs, metal film resistors, trimmers, and capacitor assortments. Next on the list is an led assortment and a diode assortment.

Anyone know of a good inexpensive, decent quality source for 1/4" jacks and pots? I would be interested in buying in quantities of at least 20.

[Ansil]

thats why you dont' desolder them you can pluck them out with a pair of hemostats real easy. or use a heat gun on the back of it. and watch the parts fall off.

[mattv]

Much more than I've spent on commercial pedals.

[aron]

I've spent a _ton_!

All in the pursuit of good distortion!  :twisted:

[RDV]

Around $700.00 US in just over 9 months. I do have a lot of finished pedals though, and enough parts to build many more. Not the cheapest hobby(habit) I've ever had, but the most satisfying for certain. Beats the living daylights out of drugs!

Regards

RDV

[ExpAnonColin]

Waaaaaaaaaay too much.

-Colin

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I don't know about DIY, but Frostwave certainly hasn't made a profit yet!
(been 8 years at least.... )

[Peter Snowberg]

When I add the cost of the NeXT for DIY DSP hacking....  :shock:

Gulp.
-Peter

[smoguzbenjamin]

I've been building for about three months now, and I've spent around 100 euros lol. Probably more, but I scavenged of an old keyboard amp, which gave me ultra-cool pots/switches (the ones where you pull the pot knob up) :mrgreen:

[Rodgre]

In about fifteen years of pedal DIYing, I've spent exactly $2,497.45.

Including buying the Boscorelli book.

Roger

[zener]

I started this insanity almost two months from now.

If I'm going to stick to the foreign exchange rate here, I've only spent around $30-$35 :shock: ! I've already built the Little Gem, Smash Drive, Dist+, LPB, EasyDrive, Muff Fuzz, Insanity Box (built it twice with new batch of resistors and capacitors the second time around), Maestro Super Fuzz (discontinued), Rocket, Hot Silicon and Ross Compressor. The amount includes all cheap plastic and aluminum boxes I bought.

Here, the cost of a single 1/4 watt resistor is not even enough to buy a single cheapest candy :shock: .

[Ansil]

really.  so are you saying they are expensive.. or that your candy is not cheap........  :twisted:   lol

sorry there i had to ask..  you should check out anomys exprial metnalist. i can't rmember how to spell all that.  anyway.. he has some great resistor deals.

[sfr]

god, it seems like every order from mouser or small bear is in the 100 dollar range - I tend to go through projects in spurts.  I've gotten to the point where i finally have all the resistors i need, now if I only had a better stock of capacitors, transistors and ICs; and if they didn't add up in cost so quickly; i might be set not having to order for a really long time.  I don't even want to think about how much i spend (my last order was 112 dollars, to get me parts for about 6 projects [i work on too much at once]) but I'm finally at the point where most of my projects I have 80-90% of what I need already.  I got a really good deal on Switchcraft jacks from eBay - what I really need is a good mixed-lot of a caps.  I keep seeing good deals, but it's always like 1000 of the same 1uf cap or something.

[javacody]

sfr, I just won an electolytic assortment on ebay.

[troubledtom]

for a $1000 bucks you can have a real good start . books , scope ,
dmm, parts , and enlosures.
                 peace,
                     - tom :roll:

[petemoore]

That's a good thing...
 When I used to buy them I would add up what I think I'd spent on them once in a while..
 DIYing them I think Ive spent less than a thousand so far...a couple [three] mail orders of around 100 buxx and numerous trips to the local NTE guys store or RS.

[idlefaction]

haha no i think he meant its all cheap!  pretty much all the 'sample' shipments i've gotten from manufacturers get shipped from the phillipines, so i suspect there are either some warehouses there or plants that make smeiconductors.  everyting should be cheap!

i've definately spent thousands.  i'd say probably 3 or 4 thousand NZ, which is about 2000USD,  but yeah, i have heaps of cool shit to show for it.  it doesn't look like RGs, but i also have a box full of circuit boards half-populated and scrounged for parts!!!  some dating back 10 years ahhaha