Thursday 29 March 2012

Man-cave back up and running!

Not everyone will be interested in this, but this post is for those who are, and the people I've been discussing this with! :o)

OK so I don't have any excuses any more not to start verifying at least some of these myself, I've finally got a load of junk moved and a little workshop built up in the garage so I can leave everything permanently setup so I can work on builds whenever I get a chance without having to dig through all my components, get the soldering iron setup on an office desk etc.  It made builds hard work because I had to be extra motivated just to be bothered hauling everything out!  So hopefully I'll be able to start verifying a few more of my own again! :o)






 (empty unit for axial caps)










49 comments:

  1. sweet mojo parts collection. glad to see someone who appreciates mother russia like me :)

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    1. Aah, now I know which Tim you are! :o)
      Yes I'm a sucker for Russian components, the germaniums are really good and I really need to do some layouts that will accomodate the big PIO caps.

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    2. teehee.

      i gotta take a photo of my shelves to compare russians.

      size is indeed a factor, i've made single transistor fuzz pedals with PIO's on boards the size of most muff boards..

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  2. Well that kinda puts my little cardboard box and coffee table to shame!

    Nice.

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    1. Hee hee, consider yourself lucky, I've got OCD with these things and decided I needed to be able to build anything at the drop of a hat and hoarded accordingly. My wife hates me. :o)

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    2. haha.. My wife left!..... all good though.. I used to have a garage but OCD was guitar.. it was like a guitar part massacre in my garage. :-)

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    3. 'OCD was FOR guitars'

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  3. get this man some 150nf box caps, stat!

    nice setup man.

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    1. Haha, there's actually 20 odd in there, you just can't see them properly because they have a plastic bag over them for some reason! I could probably do with some extra 1nF though! :o)

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    2. Oh man , that's great. I'm gonna show my wife, she might hate me a bit less!!

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  4. WOW! Two thumbs up from me, very nice!

    I wanted a reel holder for all my hook-up wire, but couldn't afford/justify the cost. Whilst in Ikea with the "bread knife" a few months back I spotted these;

    http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/70117172/

    Dirt cheap & do the job just fine. Just in case anyone is interested, that's all! Might be worth buying two & using the brackets from both for extra support across long runs!

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    1. Yes I really want something like that, I'll work out if it will fit where I want it to go. Cheers for the heads up.

      In one of my previous jobs we had a similar sort of bracket in the workshop hanging on the underside of the bench at the front so you just had to bend down slightly and have access to every reel. I'll have to see where I can cram it in

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  5. No worries mate. Mine works really well, it's dipped slightly with the weight of my shielded reel, but not to a point where I'd replace it. I'd drawn up a plan of a holder I was going to cut, weld & assemble together, but for the comparisons in cost, 'twas sheer lunacy I tell you LUNACY!

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  6. I was going to use a broom handle cut to fit exactly between 2 of the legs of my bench, and then a simple U-shaped bracket screwed to each leg to hold it in place. I'll uploads pics of whatever I end up with :o)

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  7. awesome! i've been getting my own workspace set up, and have been ordering parts like crazy since finding this site! thanks for all the work you've put into it, it's such a great resource!

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  8. I´m pretty green with pedalbuilding but i am already bitten by the "Bug".Wish i had a workbench like that...Not to mention your nice parts stash!:-).Can you recommend a good source for resistors?.I got some cheap kits from Asia but they were just that...Cheap,flimsy and unreliable.Thanks for putting all your layouts up here.Greatly appreciated!

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    1. I've bought a few of the kits from China and yes they are flimsy, but that actually can be a bonus sometimes because at least I know I could easily have two resistor leads in the same hole if I'm ever pushed for space. If I want the thick leads then I would buy them from UK suppliers who I know keep the higher quality resistors in stock, like Rapid Electronics. There are also a couple of eBay sellers in the UK who sell them, although the prices is higher than the Asian kits as you would expect.

      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/330681165741
      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120855329645

      I also have a full set of Dale CCF55's from bigsmythe74 on eBay which are really nice resistors, and I save for my best builds. Again a full set with cost a lot more than the Asian kits but it was worth it to me to have a higher quality option. They also look much cooler than the usual blue metal films! :o)

      http://stores.ebay.co.uk/bigsmythe74/Dale-CCF-55-MF-Resistors-/_i.html?_fsub=9

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    2. Just what i need!.Thanks :-)

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  9. where did you buy the plastic boxes for the components?

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    1. I got them all from various sellers on eBay. If you do a search for "component box" or "compartment box" then you should find plenty of local sellers.

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  10. You don't happen to sell any of your components do you Mark? Excuse the cheek! ;0)

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    1. I'd sell some bits if I've got plenty, but some parts I can't get any more and so I want to hoard them because they can't be replaced.

      Send me an email and let me know what you're looking for.

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  11. Understandable! Thanks matey, have emailed you! :0)

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  12. do you only use capacitor X2?

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  13. whats the make and model of the storage you keep your resistors in? and the cases for the caps? thanks

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    1. http://www.rapidonline.com/Tools-Equipment/Steel-storage-cabinets-79362

      and the smaller storage boxes were all bought from various sellers on eBay. Do a search for "component box" or "compartment box".

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  14. :o awsome! Looks great!!! Pedal building heaven!!! :)

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  15. why did you do this order on the PolyProp capacitors? There's no some components

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    1. Sorry I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean the polyprop box caps or Panasonic? Are you asking why I got them?

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  16. Heh. Don't know where else to go with my conversation opener...

    Mylar VS. Plastic box VS. Multilayer ceramic caps?

    I know plastic boxes are "the thing", as they are usually very constant in quality and sound, but.. Where normal super cheap ceramic caps do give out some noise, sometimes even really noticeable, i've not noticed any unwanted noise with any of the above. What's the downside in mylars and/or multilayer ceramics? Is there one? If there isn't i can't really see the point paying 5 times the money for plastic boxes while mylars and "MLC"s are available in wider range of values...

    If there's something i've missed please tell me :)
    +m

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    1. I'll have to start a "Parts and Components" page that we can use for discussion.

      Well mylar is polyester film, I've got some really great PETP caps (about £3 per hundred from a few eastern European sellers, have a look at KW TUBES) which are excellent and closely related to mylar (which I think are just PET). I've also got lots of multi-layer ceramic and I've never put them in a pedal and thought It'd sound better with a polyester box cap. I think they're great.

      I've got some greenies and have used them a couple of times but have been more put off by the size the larger values can be and so I probably wouldn't get them now. I always look out for deals on caps and several times now I've won an auction for something like £1.04 for 200 poly box caps so the stash I built up is mostly on bargain buys I've made (also check out bjkachner for some bargain prices on common values). I do really like the Panasonic ECQ caps and there are some Chinese sellers who do them at good prices (I paid about £3.50 delivered per 60 for quite a few common values which isn't a bad price compared to any caps, and there are some sellers now who sell in batches of 150 for around £8 delivered). So I tend to use my bargain box caps if I'm not really bothered about a build, or the Panasonics if I want to put the effort in. And always ceramic multi-layer if I want to save space (but try to get NP0, C0G or X7R dielectrics because some of the other ones have poor tolerances and reaction to temperature changes).

      I do believe that some caps with a matched value can sound different - not in all cases, but in some, but it's always subtle differences and although I may be able to pick a favourite I've never thought the other cap sounded bad apart from a few times where I've noticed the nasty decay that you can get from basic ceramics sometimes. But poly, box, mylar and ceramic multi-layer, if there are differences then they're not obvious enough to bother me.

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    2. So.. If someone is starting to hoard a stash, it's not a bad thing to get those cheap green mylars (from tayda, 3-12 us cents a pop) or try to snatch a reasonable deal on multilayer ceramics through ebay. I've seen fairly cheap mylar starter kits with 20 or so popular values on ebay too..

      I now have 5x10 "pigeonhole"(?) box, not unlike your resistor storage boxes for caps. Seeing your stash made me think that there must be something to plastic boxes, so i started to buy just plastic boxes. But for the prices i got reasonable stash of mylars and multilayers, i only got handfull of plastic boxes. I think i'm going to mix panasonics, plastic boxes, mylars and multilayers in those little drawers. That way i can always grab and use the one that fits the best - or gives me the mojo gut feeling :) So everytime i need a 100n cap, i open the drawer and choose which one fits..

      I just got 100 pieces of 1µ multilayers for 3$ postpaid :) And i think i'm going to hoard such a batch of multilayers and mylars that it will last longer than me.
      +m

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    3. The greenies would be fine, just watch the pitch and size on some of the larger values, but what I would buy would depend on how many I wanted to get in. The problem with box caps (other than the short leads) is that no one that I've come across sells them in a decent quantity at a good price so the best deals I've come across is eBay auctions. You can get a good set for bitsbox for about £5 for 100, but it's not going to last you long in the popular values. The good things about the greenies is that you can get 100 for about £3 and so you can get decent quantities of the values you'll be using a lot of for not a great deal of cash. But given the choice between greenies at 3p each or Panasonic at 5p each, I'd still choose Panasonic. Yes a bit more expensive but it's still not going to break the bank, and they're accurate, 5mm pitch throughout the range, and also consistent in physical size up to 470n. Check out:

      http://stores.ebay.co.uk/auspiciouselectronics/_i.html?_nkw=panasonic
      http://stores.ebay.co.uk/chinaeproducts/small-capacitors-/_i.html?_fsub=394336219
      http://stores.ebay.co.uk/advancedelectronics/Capacitors-/_i.html?_fsub=8667023

      They may look expensive in some of those quantities, but when you factor the free postage into it they're more appealing.

      For multi-layers though, just spend a few quid with tiaochongyi and you can stock up for life! I bought some 1u and 2u2 from there as well and they're so accurate I was amazed. I'd use them before electrolytics every time. Did you get yours from tiaochongyi?

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    4. egoto was the seller..

      I think i'm going to mix all four types in my drawers, so there will always be suitable available. I mean greenies, plastic boxes, panasonics and multilayers. Those drawers can take up to 400 caps each, so it may take a while until it's filled :)

      I'll grab some of those panasonics :) Thanks for the links. I have already reasonable amounts of 120n, 270n and 470n caps in those, as they were the only option in those values that didn't cost me 25 cents each :)

      I'm not going to express my love for radial tantalums for now :)

      +m

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    5. I like tantalums too, I've got a good stash of them. Smaller than aluminium electrolytics and will last much longer so they make a lot of sense. I'd still go for non-polar caps if given the choice just because it gives you one less thing to think about, but I'll happily use tantalums in all the usual electrolytic values.

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    6. Now that i've found the soviet components myself, your stash is extremely hardcore porn....
      +m

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    7. Hee hee, yes there's a few Russian bits in there. The ones on the bottom left aren't though, they're 2N404's and are also excellent if you can find some at a good price. Higher gain than the common Russian ones (the ones I measured were between 100 and 170 hfe with no leakage shown on the Peak), so well worth looking out for.

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    8. Those do look interesting, so i'm definitely going to check those out.. But the thing that got me going is the box that says "PIO & PETP". You must have spent something like 700€ / £555 for the contents of that box. Moar photos!
      +m

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    9. Quick check from ebay and i'm not quite sure if $8 a piece is cheap... :)

      Those soviet MP16B are supposed to be equilevant - although their datasheet indicates much lower gains.. I'll know better once i get my batch and measure them.
      +m

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    10. I got 100 for around £15 I think :o)

      I've got some other pics of all the PIO and PETP somewhere, I'll dig them out.

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    11. So i was correct 'bout $8 being quite high :D Just have to check from time to time if anything pops up.

      MP20A is something that i'm getting. Datasheet says 50-150, and as these are russians, there may well be many over 100 hFE...
      +m

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    12. Now that's more like it! I definitely see these in my future.

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    13. I've got some MP16B's and some MP20's somewhere but I haven't tested them yet. I'll check them out tomorrow and let you know.

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    14. I'd like to cut the OC series germaniums out entirely (I'm a poor student!), so hopefully the MP20 measurements look good.

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    15. Even if they measure 60 hFE each, i'm still getting them. Those have amazingly high mojo value, plus they look so sick.

      Are those axial tantalums non-polar?
      +m

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    16. Ha. Just grabbed a whole lot of MP20As, P416As and MP25Bs. Should last a year or two :)

      Plus some axial tantalums and philips electrolytics. Latter i got for ~$0.30 a pop, which seems to be cheaper than cheese.
      +m

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  17. Nice setup! this gives me some ideas and goosebumps as-well. I love your variety in Germ Trannys you got. Now for a little clean up on my workbench! here it goes :).........
    vince

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