Any other electronics geeks

[ironsniper1]

was digging through junk looking for my nes and sega genesis and found a radio shack soldering iron with a near perfect tip going to switch the tip with the one with the stand

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Luke, what applications got you interested in electronics, or do you have specific goals, short term or long term? Or just like tinkering with wires and components? Is the process more important, or the objective?

 

Old dad was an old-fashioned communications engineer who started engineering as a young man in the late 1940's. He held a life-long "prejudice" that radio is the only "manly" art of electronics. That other electronic specialties are for dweebs and losers who are not smart enough to work with RF. :)

 

So anyway I was interested in various little electronic projects from about age 8 to 17, then lost interest in sniffing solder fumes. At that age some concepts were repeatedly explained that I just didn't "get". For instance, back then I never got a good grasp of exactly what is bias and what is it good for. The spoken and printed explanations just didn't "click".

 

Then in mid-20's, got interested in designing and building audio equalizers and audio dynamic range processors. Spent lots of time reading references over and over, until finally some of it began to click. My problem earlier as a kid-- Too impatient. If I would read an explanation twice and not understand it, I'd give up. But discovered if one grabs onto a topic like a pit bull, and doesn't stop until the light dawns, then eventually the light will shine, even if it takes days or weeks.

 

Eventually I developed slightly broader electronic interests, encompassing most audio, music synthesis, and digital at least if digital happened to somehow apply to music, sound or theatrical lighting. But never got interested in radio or industrial control systems or what-not. If I could make a microcontroller control music, audio or lights I was all over it, but never could think up anything outside that narrow view, that a microcontroller might be good for. :)

 

So do you have certain specific goals in mind?

Edited June 5, 2014 by Lester Weevils

[ironsniper1]

right now i just do it as a hobby cause i like taking things apart and trying to fix things, my main career is in computers but i wish i could use my skills to make a little extra cash on the side while i look for full time work, but with the economy the way it is everyone in their mother is posting online doing the same thing, which basiclly floods the market, making that type of work harder, but thats a topic for a different post

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I occasionally wondered what the repair market is like nowadays. With so much stuff as cheap to discard/replace as to repair. Always seemed a waste to me, discarding a perfectly good thang rather than replace a two cent part. The problem was, how much time does it take to find and replace the two cent part? If you have to get X dollars an hour, and it would take one hour to fix the gadget, and the fella can go to the big box store and buy new for half of X, the waste for lack of the two cent part has to go by the wayside I suppose.

 

I did a good bit of repair off'n'on in the 1970's and 80's. I was always playing a music job, was lucky to stay in work near constantly for decades, but that was only 26 hours a week or whatever, so it left time for other stuff. I mainly fixed music gear. At that time, it seemed that all you had to do (for the music electronic niche) to get more work than you could possibly do, just let it be known you would fix stuff, and then a couple of weeks later you were a month behind and would stay thataway til you couldn't stand it any more and quit.

 

Bench repair would drive me nuts. Could only do it an hour or two a day. A couple of times tried doing it near full time, and after a couple of days, I'd go out and sit down at the bench and couldn't sit still, ready to quit work as soon as I started. Like being chained to an oar in a galley ship. But could futz around trying to design stuff practically forever without getting bored.

 

In addition to knowing what the market will bear-- Dunno if the name is obsolete nowadays, but in the old days if you ran across a gadget that simply refused to be fixed, that kind of job was called a tough dog. The tough dog is the kind of thing you have to fix once you start it, because you are too proud to admit to the customer that you are a complete moron. But after a certain number of hours, you have spent as many hours possible on that gadget that you can charge the customer or he may have a heart attack or shoot you when he sees the bill. So after you pass that hour boundary, you are working for dam free from that point on. That is why you need to charge a little bit outrageous, as much as the market will bear, even on simple jobs, because YOU WILL get tough dogs, and if you charge the minimum on simple stuff, then you won't like working for free extra hours on the tough dogs just to prove to the customer that you are not a drooling idjit.

 

There is a hidden hazard, however, in fixing too many tough dogs. If you get a good reputation for fixing tough dogs, then other shops will start referring customers with tough dogs to you. And then every dam repair a customer brings in will turn into a long drawn out science project! You'll go broke just because people think you are a good repairman, and bring you all the hard stuff! :)

 

You can make the most money, by minimizing repair time per unit, specializing in gadgets. If somebody would bring me something I'd never opened up before, a new music synth X or whatever. It was predictably iffy to make much of a profit on that first unit X because it took some time to study the schematic and familiarize oneself with the device, how it works, etc. But the second or tenth synth X somebody would bring in, I could fix practically blindfolded after learning the unit the first time around. So it was the kiss of death to accept just any old thing for repair, but then again if you tell a customer NO too many times he'll start going somewhere else and you might get lonely. Many times I'd tell myself, "Man wish I could get more Crown DC300 in for repair" or whatever, because if I had a whole shelf of Crown DC300's lined up, could shove out some product and make some easy money, not so many dern science projects to deal with. :)

 

The other wise way to specialize-- Specialize in fixing EXPENSIVE equipment. People will pay more when you fix a $50,000 piece of gear, than they will pay for fixing a $50 gadget. For instance, from my experience it was EASIER to fix 2" studio tape recorders, than to fix consumer cassette decks. Unfortunately my area didn't have many of those so I only got to work on a studio recorder once in a blue moon. But it was a pleasure working on a big old tape machine, compared to fixing something made out of incredibly cheap tiny little bits of plastic and metal like a cassette recorder. And people would pay so much more if you fixed their studio machine and they could go back to taking advantage of small time gospel groups who wanted to make an album. Of course it didn't take long till I started giving a firm NO to stuff like consumer tape recorders, stereos, etc.

 

I eventually quit taking in anything except what I knew I could fix fast. Common power amps, mixers were real easy. I'd repair and tune LOTS of electric pianos and a fair number of acoustic pianos because you could about do that stuff on auto-pilot, and it payed as good or better than ruining your mind and spirit trying to fix a tough dog.

 

The "professional" way to specialize might take some training, but people who fix stuff that costs not thousands, but millions of dollars can demand real high fees. Even though, in some cases fixing the stuff might not be incredibly more difficult than fixing a cheap-ass piece of consumer gear. Companies who have millions of dollars worth of gear don't trust any old jack-of-all-trades to touch their stuff, though.

 

Old dad for a long time-- He was an engineer who was a glorified repairman for about half his job. But he was a repairman who worked on stuff that costed millions of dollars, and the company figgered somebody who could screw up an investment that big ought to be an engineer to have the job.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Lester Weevils

[ironsniper1]

ok all the stuff i ordered came in the mail, first the tv, i soldered in the new part and hooked the board up and its still not working i will keep working on it, second item was a mod chip for my original xbox and its working perfectly and last was replacement joysticks for my xbox controller and they also work perfectly so 2 out of 3 aint to bad

[R_Bert]

I was a bench-monkey back in high school & early college (late '70s). Made some decent $ for a kid. Paid for a lot of radio equipment (which meant I never actually broke even).  Nowadays, my eyeballs barely cooperate.

Edited June 15, 2014 by R_Bert

[hardknox00001]

I was too young and stupid at the time but now I wish I'd have gotten in to messing with the Heathkit stuff.  Got some old Heathkit ham stuff that needs some attention now.  Wouldn't have a clue as to what to do.

 

Ah, to be able to go back to youth with current knowlege.......

Edited June 15, 2014 by hardknox00001

[div]

Hmmm... Don't know how I missed this one. I've been in the electronics repair industry for almost 20 years now. Started off as a hobby when I was a kid, happened into a job doing it. Spent a lot of time doing laptops and cell phones. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[R_Bert]

I was too young and stupid at the time but now I wish I'd have gotten in to messing with the Heathkit stuff.  Got some old Heathkit ham stuff that needs some attention now.  Wouldn't have a clue as to what to do.

 

Ah, to be able to go back to youth with current knowlege.......

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