I'm not buying parts for the next 2 and a half years

Started by Cliff Schecht, January 25, 2007, 06:23:12 PM

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Cliff Schecht

I just found out that in the basement of the electrical engineering building at my school, there is a room that has shelf upon shelf of parts. Best news... It's all free! They said any time I want, I can come down there and steal whatever parts I need (within reason, whatever that means :icon_razz:). They have some amazing mojo stuff down there too, I'll sneak some pictures sometime. I don't even know where to start (although they didn't have any germanium trannies), but I've already collected up parts for a new Colorsound twin-t wah (the inductorless thing). I see a lot of builds happening in the near future ;D.

MKB

Grab the tubes, man!!  You could make a fortune on ebay if they have the right stuff.  Imagine, a case of TungSol 5881's covered with dust..... :icon_eek:

joelap

I should see if my university has parts.  I know they have tubes somewhere...
- witty sig -

rockgardenlove




zachomega

haha...If you want tubes, I have a couple thousand I'd happily part with...sadly there isn't much in them that hasn't been picked through a million times unless you want 1, 3, or 7 volt tubes. 

-Zach Omega

bancika

I don't care about voltage :) Do you have any (low) power pentodes?
The new version of DIY Layout Creator is out, check it out here


Cliff Schecht

Quote from: zachomega on January 25, 2007, 08:48:24 PM
haha...If you want tubes, I have a couple thousand I'd happily part with...sadly there isn't much in them that hasn't been picked through a million times unless you want 1, 3, or 7 volt tubes. 

-Zach Omega

Same here man, I've got enough tubes to last myself and Marshall for a year. That is, if Marshall used old radio tubes :icon_lol:.

David

Hey, Cliff!  See if there are any SAD-4096s in there!  Or maybe some top-octave generator chips.

R.G.

You know, if I'd had free access to all the parts I wanted, I'd likely have flunked out of school.  :icon_biggrin:
R.G.

In response to the questions in the forum - PCB Layout for Musical Effects is available from The Book Patch. Search "PCB Layout" and it ought to appear.

Cliff Schecht

It's kinda funny actually. I've been down there helping a friend out because I'm not in the project (where you actually start building stuff) yet. I failed a class called modern digital system design with a really bad teacher (retook it and got an A :D) and the class after that (microcontrollers) is a pre-requisite, which I'm taking now. It ended up being me down in the lab helping out 4 different groups for 3 or 4 hours today and I'm not even in the class. These schools nowadays seem to really focus on the theoretical aspects of engineering but really don't teach students how to design anything practical. I had to show a kid how to hook up a 555 timer in astable form, he couldn't figure out how to wire up his breadboard right ::).

markm

Quote from: R.G. on January 26, 2007, 08:10:24 PM
You know, if I'd had free access to all the parts I wanted, I'd likely have flunked out of school.  :icon_biggrin:

:icon_lol:

JonFrum

Quote from: R.G. on January 26, 2007, 08:10:24 PM
You know, if I'd had free access to all the parts I wanted, I'd likely have flunked out of school.  :icon_biggrin:


An old friend of mine called it "access to excess". Not necessarily a good thing.    :icon_biggrin:

John Lyons

I'm sure this has happened all over but...

There was an adult education tech class in town. Years after it was established they started having a "build your own tube amp" amp class with a really knowlegable teacher(who was pretty much socially retarded by the way) and a fully stocked classroom. Huge wall mount cabinet bins and drawers full of parts, full sets of caps resistors in every value, solder stations O scopes, test tone generators, etc etc. 
There were individual custom electronics work benches set up for the soldering stations and for scopes to sit at each desk...........

Well, the class fell apart because the teacher was not able to keep students in the seats. The guy was brilliant but he couldn't carry a conversation really. People were asking about resistors and he was talking about the skin effect of stranded wire...way over their heads.

One of the make-do teacher's aids who was just in the class trying to bridge the gap between the students questions and the teachers some what idiot savant like skills said he went over to the classroom after the classes ended and there was a classfull of people in the room, the whole room was bare and the desks, cabinets, and every scrap of electronics stuff as well as the work stations were gone! They had been replaced by regular desks and chairs. The guy asked the teacher what happened and she said they needed the room for English as a second Language classes instead. As far as she knew, everything was just tossed. The guy said he nearly fell over when she told him.

I nearly fell over when he told me. Sad!
No problem with learning to speak english, just that all that stuff was squandered!

John

Basic Audio Pedals
www.basicaudio.net/

Cliff Schecht

Damn, that's terrible! I'm sure some ultra cool stuff could have been had.

They actually had a bunch of vintage tube radios and when I opened one up, it had about 20 new tubes, in the boxes, inside of it. Sometime soon I'll bring a camera down and snap some pics, some of the stuff they have is unreal.