Will through-hole components cease production any time soon?

[Taylor]

It's always been my assumption that we have available to us so many components because we are riding the tail of huge manufacturers. TI and Fairchild Semi can afford to develop ICs and other components because they know they will sell approximately jillions of them to big manufacturers who will use them in stereos, TVs, which will ship tons of units. There are also the gigantic musical instrument companies. If people like us were the only market for these components, they would be way more expensive.

But, of course, all big manufacturers these days do everything with SMT. Not just TVs, DVD players, and stereos, but even mass-produced stompboxes, preamps, mixers, and so on. It would seem that there should be almost no demand for through-hole ICs or transistors from any of the really big industries anymore. I'm wondering this: will we start to see all the components that we use in effects either go out of production or become much more expensive? Will there come a day when TL072s are being sold as "NOS" for 10 bucks apiece?

[Nitefly182]

The government and military have big contracts for electronics and all those contracts have pretty strict stipulations about parts and manufacturing specs. Im not sure but Im guessing anything milspec or shuttle-worthy is going to be hand assembled through-hole work so as long as that is the demand I think we will still have access to the parts we like. As long as there is a reasonable demand for a product it will still be made. Take carbon comps for example, you have a choice of several brands at mouser for a product that is 100% outdated.

[liddokun]

Will there come a day when TL072s are being sold as "NOS" for 10 bucks apiece?

Probably, but not for a long while, imho.

[waky]

Well there are some newer Semiconductors that couldn't be found on trough hole packages since they came out... I think its a slow but sure process.. about the anytime soon, probably not even if the companies stoped making through hole stuff, as you say almost no manufacturer uses them anymore, so they would all be to ourselves!. 

[Mark Hammer]

Much as some of us might have gotten accustomed to other outcomes, some people in the world still repair things.  Yup, it's true.  Not everyone just chucks things at the end of the driveway or in the apartment dumpster.  Not only that, there are still plenty of copmmercial customers for through-hole components.  So, through-hole will continue to be available in many forms simply to correspond to demand.

There are, obviously, some products introduced at the cusp of the widespread conversion to SMT production methods, whose presence will shrink from being available in DIP or SIP and other forms, to being available only in surface-mount formats.  Finally, there is still a need for resistors that will handle more wattage, and caps that will handle supplies higher than 12v, and since it gets awkward and not particularly cost-effective to manufacture boards that include surface-mount op-amps AND through-hole passive components, it is hard for me to imagine that commonly used devices will become available only in surface-mount form anytime soon.

At least that's my prediction as an industry outsider.

[culturejam]

Just for kicks, the other day I popped open a broken DVD player (was only about a year old) to have a look in inside. I expected nothing usable by me, but was pleasantly surprised to see that all the components on the power supply board were through-hole. I snagged a couple of poly caps as well as some nice 1uf monolithic ceramics. And there were several large electrolytics, as well as a few TO-92 transistors and some kind of IC.