Idea for a sticky

[inverseroom]

Hi there--I'm a new member, just over from TapeOp.  I've been building a lot of kit stuff lately--PAiA, 4ms, and a couple boxes from Keith at www.buildyourownclone.com.  Needless to say I'm starting to think about building stuff from scratch.

One thing that would be nice would be for somebody to compile a complete "stompbox builder's kit"--a long list of all the parts a stompbox designer would want to have in his/her workshop, in quantities that would allow plenty of time for experimentation and screwing up.  Newbies could just copy the list and send it to Mouser.  I've been thinking about this for awhile, since I'm colorblind (well--color-deficient anyhow) and can't sort resistors well--it would be nice to just order a zillion of them and sort them once into little plastic drawers, then never have to think about them again.  Which led me to think about the other parts as well...

Thanks for all the great info!

[Khas Evets]

Aron does have some buying tips on his site, which were very helpful. I just did the same thing about 6 months back and it took forever trying to decide which type and tolerence for each part would be appropiate for stompboxes. I would have saved many hours if this had existed.

[Peter Snowberg]

Welcome to the forum inverseroom.

The problem with parts lists is the same thing you would run into if you tried to buy food stock to outfit a new restaurant. With so many possible parts to choose from you really need to know if you're making Brazilian or Cantonese food first.

I would suggest looking at the next 5 projects you want to build and make a master parts list from what those projects will take. Some parts are pretty generic and it's always a good idea to have a selection of basic resistors, caps, ICs, and transistors.


When getting started, "assortment kits" of different value components can be very helpful. Round up the quantities of the parts you need so you have extra and remember that quantity is everything. 1000 resistors can be had for $3 at http://www.circuitspecialists.com/ while RadioShack will give you 15 resistors for the same $3. :shock:

[javacody]

Peter is right, get an assortment to help start you off.

Small bear sells cap assortments and I think resistor assortments as well.

Also, radio shack has a resistor assortment for about $5 and you can get a ceramic cap and electro cap assortment as well.

I did a lot of my component hunting on ebay. I got grab bag of LED's, an assortment of diodes (probably more than I'll ever need, for just a couple bucks), etc, etc. I've also found some NOS Russian Paper in oil caps, for vintage amp type stuff, for very, very cheap.  

Get your stomp switches from Aron, he also sells some of the most common components seen in the pedals around here, namely the J201 JFET and the 2n5088/89 transistors.