Visit your local rat shack

[boogietone]

The knobs at rat shack are not half bad and the price is reasonable. The small diameter ones are good for small spaces and certainly work fine for prototypes.

I like the "Boss" style knobs that they sell, most of my builds have them.

Have a box full of them as well. Currently working with the clear Davies knobs from the group buy.

[Mac Walker]

Wow. Business must have declined to the point that they hired a different MBA to advise them on product line. 

I read somewhere that if you have one of those MBA degrees you can be the CEO of Intel, even WITHOUT an engineering degree!

Won't step foot in Radio Shack ever again....

[Earthscum]

They've been upping their kit stuff for the last year or 2. I really don't see any new stock in mine, either of them.

Now... if they'd start carrying the chips and transistors and such again, that would be groovy. Their selection sux.

And the prices need to drop. When I get in a desperate situation, I can easily double the price of a build just by having to purchase a couple parts from RS or my local NTE guy. If I could get there while he's open, Hogue Electrionics in Cheyenne has everything I need at, usually, surplus prices. He's, of course, an hour away and only open during the hours I work. That guy has tubes, sockets, sub-mini's, TTL, CMOS...

[arawn]

yeah well my best option is 2 hours away in ST Louis and I just found out about them today. I am left with mailorder or ratshack.

[Earthscum]

hehe... I still shop at the Shack.

My first full build used all radio shack parts... "stomp" switch, a pair of 2N2222's, a diode... I even used the aluminum box and slanted it. The only thing that I had to get from Mountain States for it was the 1k pot. I had a damn nice Bazz Fuss. Since I built my 125B Bazz Fuss, I haven't used it.

Rat Shack also has really nice black plastic LED holders. Flexible, snap right in place. They seem kinda crappy until you get the LED installed. It's a holder, but more of a trim ring. They are my favorite ones in that style.

And, their battery snaps are actually not a bad deal. They are rugged. That's actually what I use on all my builds.

[defaced]

Yea, I noticed the trend when I was in LA in May, the shop in Santa Clarita had ALOT more cool things than the one here in York.  Then I go into the York store a couple of weeks ago to buy some ferric chloride, and bang, there's big perf board, some kits, and some other cool stuff.  I'll keep it in the back of my head for things I may need later. 

[Electron Tornado]

Somehow I've gotten some marketing emails from Radio Shack stating that they want to hear from the DIY community about what we want to see in the stores. So, got suggestions, email them, posting here is just preaching to the choir. OR - make a list of things in this thread, and everyone start emailing them.

I would like to see a better parts selection, start carrying some of the cooler all metal enclosures they had years ago, and start carrying some decent external power jacks because the ones they have now just su....er, create a vacuum.  Some to think of it, I remember when I could buy coax cable from them for my ham radio antenna, or to make guitar cables.

[PRR]

> the Tandy nameplate died, but it was a subsidiary of Texas instruments just like radio shack.

There's no connection with Texas Instruments.

Radio Shack was an old struggling ham-radio operation.

Charles Tandy had built a family business into a large franchise of leather-work stores. Got all over the country just in time for Westerns then hand-made sandals. But there's a limit how much leather you can sell.

Tandy bought Radio Shack in 1963, and BUILT it. An amazing man. Steamrollered Lafayette who was also trying to grow the electronic parts and hi-fis racket. Had grand ideas like personal computers long before the idea was accepted, and did OK between high-end and commodity batteries. But he died 1978. The Shed has been fairly rudderless since then.

Tandy dealt with TI, of course. TI makes chips, Tandy sold a few. But no close connection. They are both in Texas but that's a big place.

Tandy had Radio Shack type stores in the UK until 1999, and in Australia until 2001. There was a snafu in Canada.

Tandy bought Allied but was asked to split-off the retail stores and separate the industrial division.

RadioShack has dropped the Tandy name.


I have to like the idea of more DIY in RS. The hobby is changing and not in good ways. Having some kits when mom drags the kid for a watch-battery is likely to bring in fresh blood, young addicts.

Also RS historically has strong buying power. They have stuff made for them in quantities large enough to keep manufacturers interested. That could mean runs of through-hole DIPs after everything has gone SMD.

[paulyy]

Rat shack sells parts!?  I thought they sold candy, Coke cell phones. I would of never thought that.
Just kidding. There ok sometimes. I just wish they were alittle cheaper.

[soggybag]

I was just at the "shack" the other day. I bought a couple of those large DPDT toggle switches to make a couple test rigs. Here's a picture:



Flick the switch to ON and the signal goes in through the green wire and out through the red one. Flick it to OFF and it connects input to output. Imagine a breadboard in the center. Not sure why had not built one of these earlier. Not sure why didn't make one of these years ago. It's so handy. No need to find a couple old jacks, don't have worry about guitar cables pulling my breadboard off the desk etc. So handy!

http://www.super-freq.com/2011/08/breadboard-test-rig/

I also bought a couple of those transformers 273-1380 audio transformers. These are great for octave and other effects. I built the ipod impedance matcher with two. An idea suggested by PRR on another site. Seemed to improve sound quality, though not quite as dramatically as I would have liked. Have to give this a test in the car.

http://beavishifi.com/projects/Passive_IPOD_Preamplifier/

[CodeMonk]

RadioShack is fine if you don't mine being ripped off and getting inferior parts. Example: their no name 1/4" mono jacks with simple pressed sleeves that spin around when you tighten the nut are like $4. You can get THREE way BETTER mono jacks made by Neutrik for about the same price.

I don't go to RadioShack unless they have something that I need RIGHT NOW and don't mind spending a few extra dollars to get it.

Thats pretty much to only reason I go there.
And their price on solder wick isn't to outrageous.

[arawn]

Pictures of the semi final build Gotta talk to my carpenter about a nice wooden combo.

[wavley]

Wow. Business must have declined to the point that they hired a different MBA to advise them on product line. 

The Rat Shack in my town is run by an old guy that's worked there for years, he actually had a corner of the store devoted to the stuff they ordered him to return but he wouldn't.  Last time I was in there working on a quick weekend repair I noticed the Forrest Mims books and the Velleman kits and talked to him about it and he said that Rat Shack had set up a booth at some huge DIY convention and they caught major crap all day from everybody there and corporate finally took notice (apparently store managers complaining for years didn't matter).

[Seven64]

their carbon resistor pack is pretty awesome.

[thedefog]

Their ABS plastic enclosures aren't priced terribly. And if you need a switch or something in a pinch, it is nice to have. I often find myself making trips there so I don't have to spend $5 shipping on a $1 part.

[Earthscum]

Univibe Lamps?

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104023 12V/50mA

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103780 12V/60mA

[greaser_au]

The old Tandy shop was a fairly common sight here in Adelaide in the 70's & 80's. They stocked a fairly wide range of components - all blister packed - and expensive, but they had some really hardcore cool things like speech synthesizer & sound generator chips (and excellent data for them). They had useful beginner books by people like Forrest M. Mims & their eponymous semiconductor reference books (full of data sheets, pinouts & transistor substitutions) - I still refer to it from time to time. I used to hang out at the local one!

In the late 80's Tandy moved away from keeping components & were just moving appliance commodities - what parts trade they did have was likely mostly taken up by  other shops like Dick Smith Electronics, which was starting to open more shops. DSE was purchased by Woolworths & started to increase their commodity trade, & more recently the Tandy shops were acquired by DSE- brands like optimus & genexxa started appearing in DSE stores.   Now DSE have gone the same way as Tandy - almost no parts (a few plugs & sockets mainly), a small range of tools & kits- and  these only in certain stores. The writing was on the wall as, like Tandy, certain values of resistors and capacitors started to disappear a few years before, I would imagine this would be the career MBA hard at work... "hmmm let's see, we only sell 1/10th as many 12k resistors as 10k, so if we drop the 12k & buy 10% more 10k we can drop a PLU from the system, a bin in every store, & a line in the catalogue, we can save a few cents a year per shop - I mean there's no difference between a 10k & a 12k that I can see..."  

Other shops like Jaycar will no doubt have picked more business as a result (this includes me!) and are starting to open more stores here - there is now one only 12km away. Their sizeable commodity range is being added to yearly. I'm watching the parts range for now!

david

[garcho]

"That could mean runs of through-hole DIPs after everything has gone SMD."

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! It's gonna be ok, it was just a dream, just a dream...