How did people learn about this years ago? before the internet.

[albatross]

Hi,

What has me boggled , is most of the best circuits have already been done many years ago, but that was way before the internet was around for everyone.

How did such people learn about audio electronics, and stompboxes in general was there a craze at some point?
I mean i was born in 77', but most of the best circuits were already around then!

I cant see many magazines being around then, as the people that made most of those great circuits knew exactly what they were doing.

Ive learnt a lot in the past couple/few years of looking at this forum on & off , without the internet, how long would this have took? without having circuits to build upon, and look at how they work etc..?

[GibsonGM]

I'd imagine most of the DIY stuff back then, or start-up guys, came from electrical engineer backgrounds.  In a strange way, more people knew about electronics back then.  Amp repair, TV and radio repairmen - everyone made a crystal set back then (even me, born in '71!).  Ham radio guys were also common...that's how I started understanding electronics, by an ARRL book given to me in about 1998.

If you follow the history of how effects came about, you see that they mimic natural processes and there is a logical progression.   Like, overdriven tube amps led to the creation of square waves (fuzz box).  Other circuits existed that were modified for our effect use, like phase shifting.  It just took curious, creative people to play with them at lenght and discover their potentials!  Maybe the availability of oscilloscopes in the early to mid 60's played a big part, too.   Diode clipping was known for ages before the 60's, and if you see that on a scope and compare it with a driven amplifier, you might make a connection.   

We have it much easier today with the Net, for sure, but I think that drive for creativity has decreased - there aren't too many of us left out there.  People seem less curious - maybe they are over-entertained by the 8 hrs. of TV they watch on average every day?  So it's awesome we have this forum to check in on and get ideas together! 

[Mark Hammer]

Hard to think of someone who is 30 being a "kid", but......

All the early innovators tended to do their learning in other related fields.  Keep in mind that once upon a time it was far cheaper to make your own hi-fi system than it was to buy one, and for most tinkerers the product would typically be superior to what was locally available.  The amount of information available on hi-fi and music reproduction as well as ham radio and similar topics was quite substantial.  Magazines oriented to those areas were in abundance.  Popular Electronics, radio Electronics, Electronics Today, Wireless World.  These and many more were a hotbed of information.

Some people learned from kits.  One of my high school buddies built himself a terrific medium-power guitar amp from a Heathkit kit around 1967 or so, as well as a Heathkit fuzzbox.  Basically, we tinkered.  Sometimes we stumbled onto stuff that was useful and interesting, and sometimes we were spinning our wheels.

But I would agree with you that what is currently available has expedited learning like gangbusters.  I've learned more here in the last 5 years than I learned between 1970 and 2000, even with all the magazine subscriptions I had, the buddies I had in tech services at various universities, and my incessant combing of the TK section in university libraries for several decades.

[dachshund]

Craig Anderton's book was out by the time I got interested in this stuff, at around 1980. But I never got very good at it without having a mentor or a community to bounce ideas with. I built a couple of things, but they weren't useful.
I tripped over a link to this forum last year, and I was just amazed at the amount of information available.

[Torchy]

I can only speak from a UK perspective, but dont forget that the 50's saw a massive amount of 20-somethings fresh out of the armed forces trained as electrical/radio/radar engineers who served at the end of the war when the major innovations were going on. An awful lot got into commercial electronics and brought their forces training and innovative attitudes from WW2. With National Service, a lot of young guys did stints in the forces and left in the 60's, having been trained by and working alongside the older guys but with a fresh attitude to fledgling "electric" music (ie not dance bands). Startup companies such as Solasound/Marshall/Vox were founded by these guys, who knew who to recruit. The boom in global manufacturing meant guitars and amps were more readily available and many more people got into fx.

Then again, in those days instead of leaping on a web forum and asking "what would happen if I ...", we just blew stuff up and learned form it. In a word, experimentation.

[Mark Hammer]

I can only speak from a UK perspective, but dont forget that the 50's saw a massive amount of 20-somethings fresh out of the armed forces trained as electrical/radio/radar engineers who served at the end of the war when the major innovations were going on. An awful lot got into commercial electronics and brought their forces training and innovative attitudes from WW2.

That's where Roger Mayer came from.

[StephenGiles]

In England - Practical Electronics, Hobby Electronics, ETI, Elektor, writing many letters for circuits - who needed the internet?

[Paul Marossy]

There were also lots of *real* electronics magazines around back then with projects and stuff. That's when RadioShack was actually an electronics store, not the consumer electronics peddler that it has become. Times have changed.

[pipedwho]

It was actually easier 20 years ago, because the data you were looking for wasn't hidden in a sea of random garble, uninformed opinions and misinformation. It was also presented in a more hierarchical manner, ie. you didn't just read chapter 12 of an electronics textbook until you at least understood the first few basic chapters. Magazines also gave you a background and understanding of what was going on (to a degree) along with the circuit. They also provided some real test data of the end result and explained how to repeat these tests.

It is possible to find some good sites on the internet that describe things properly, but most assume pre-existing knowledge, and even these sites are difficult to find amidst the 5000 hits you get for useless ones. Very few sites give you the whole picture from design goals, methodologies, circuits, expected results, actual results and informed opinions on the result.

That being said, the internet is a great resource for someone already knowledgeable to find some obscure information, and for beginners to ask questions. (eg. this board).

edit: The above may come across as a bit negative of the internet, but it was in no way meant to be. I was responding more to the specific point of using the internet alone to learn an entire field (eg. audio electronics) from a standing start. 

[db]

I feel sorry for kids these days especially around my part of the world.  There are no proper apprenticeship schemes any more and in my opinion they offered the best environment to learn.  The internet is all very well and good, but it's not a substitute for hands on training and experience.

25 years ago I was lucky enough to do a 5 year apprenticeship (with one day a week at college which lasted for 8 years!) and had to cover all sorts - not just electronics design and manufacturing.  We were trained up in instrument fitting, turning, milling, grinding, making tea, plant maintenance, production engineering, pcb manufacturing, etc. etc. the list was endless.  And the best thing was that we had no responsibility other than to learn and not do anything dangerous.

Those days are gone for good

[jonathan perez]

these folks are all lying.

the information was NEVER available, before the invention of the internet in 1997.

[Transmogrifox]

these folks are all lying.

the information was NEVER available, before the invention of the internet in 1997.

People were just a whole lot more intelligent back then.  They figured it out on their own...and if they didn't, they were put into special ed.

(note: very tongue-in-cheek  )

[mojotron]

It was hard as heck...

[The Tone God]

How did people learn about this years ago? before the internet.

We studied and worked hard.

Now get off my lawn.

Andrew

[squidsquad]

Tone God = big laugh...heheeeeeee!

[mac]

First, the internet was born almost when the first fuzz faces were manufactured, if not before. Of course the data on the net were more military and scientific on those days... but who knows. My first email account was in ...'84. (God, I'm getting old)

Second, Isaac Asimov described on one of his many tales the best device for entertainment, pleasure and learning that can boost peolpe imagination to highest levels. With this device people can feel they are part of the story or visualize science. He called this magical device "book".

The internet had the same impact that Gutenberg had with his print. Unfortunately, although the knowledge is a click away, most people uses the internet to get dates, etc., and most of internet content is nonsense. But those who want to expand their minds, and tone, will find sites and forums like this hidden between zillions of pages.

BTW, shouldn't this thread be moved to the lounge?

mac

[km-r]

i see lots of dirty schematic pages scanned and uploaded in the internet.. that must be some evidence...

anyway, im from '87!

[Kornell]

i see lots of dirty schematic pages scanned and uploaded in the internet.. that must be some evidence...

Haha, it looks you're talking about paleontologic  fossils. 
I can assure you there was life before the internet but we are now in the  'fast food' era. 

[Steben]

Born in '81.

No fossil, yet even I remember being into looking schematics up in magazines before 1997...

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Curiously enough, I bought a carton of 1950s electronics books today....
I agree about the tech guys from WW2, also hams, also hifi DIYers (often the same guys!). Plus there was a lot of 'surplus' stuff in the 50s & 60s. The trouble today is, if you open anything up, there is nothing (or nothing visible) in it. Even a car today, is full of inaccessible black boxes & parts jammed in so you can't get at them.
I really feel that 40 years ago it was much easier to get a basic technical education.