Being Dismissive when help is offered ...

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Agreed mabye we need an Electronics 101 Area and we can just ask stupid questions and wait till the smart cats show up.

Id still like to know how to push a transformer based balanced output VS a IC balanced one..

Lets do it.
 
What beginners might not understand is that the ability to design and fix and understand electronics well often takes years of DIY and/or school and/or thinking and/or building and/or reading.  So IMO you are expecting a lot if you think you will get stuff right away.

I think 9VDC battery based guitar bass effects is a good place to start because of the battery and amount of projects in books and on the web.

What started me was aurora HO cars in the 60's.  I would take them apart and mod the pancake motors and change the tires trying to get them to stay on the track this was before magnatraction.

In the meta meta are good posts by C.J. on beginner electronics things

Then move on to physics and math and chemistry

You really need to be able to use ohms law it is not that hard and there are web pages with java calculators IIRC.

You start to get better at this stuff after a few decades.

For the question about the microphone body.  I went thur a lot of fets and matched two fets.  I then built two microphones with the same circuit one in a v67 body one in a piece of fence post same type china 32mm from MXL microphones.  They sound different and even if I swap the capsules the sound follows the body.  I built them to test the grill and other effects on the sound I read the SPA article on the 47 grill and wanted to do a test for myself.

 
I dont think its a case of not understanding, I see some of the posts on here and am in awe.

sometime we want a compressor not a fuzz box, easy enough to build, but hard to understand.

by a simple 'this is here to do this' would lead to a 'because of this'

plus the byproducts of schematic reading etc.
 
I think I saw this thread coming these last few days.
I agree with a lot of what has been said before. I also think everything gets very easy when you can get a readymade kit. And it has a lot to do with the kind of attitude this board is dealing with.

I've been taking part in that thread SSLtech talks about, because I'm also quite concerned about this. I'm a sort of newbie too, but have been reading this board for maybe two years before making my first post. That's because I don't want to post another "resistance color code?" thread and clutter the internet with more stupidity. I was amazed at how people were lobbying for their own interest when someone just said "do it yourself" to the guy. Isn't it the aim of this board, diy? The fact that money is being made on the kindness and knowledge of this place's gurus annoys me, to say the least, and hearing some people complaining about "people not sharing enough" when all they want is a free consulting sounds crazy to me.
I am glad some legit businesses make some money here (they can say it's just a little summer fun job, it's still profit), and they make kits and whatnot available to clueless people like me or just lazy ones (like me too). They are legit companies, pay taxes, sometimes people work for them, great! I sometimes find it hard to believe that some people selling hundreds of units of their stuff on a very regular basis here are not doing it for profit or are legit businesses ( as I don't think legit businesses do things under the radar, and nonprofit ones can't be that big and time-consuming, IMO ). Non legit businesses make it hard for legit businesses to survive by being a disloyal challenger ( sorry, don't know "concurrence déloyale" in proper english). I don't really want to support that. Of course, some of those people have some really cool stuff, so no one says anything.
To sum up, I think this blooming of commercial offers has something to do with this attitude problem people seem to have sometimes.

In fact, the day I got my first 1176 boards from Mnats, I saw how easier it made the whole process, and I really appreciated it (I had been home etching and drilling 8 greenpres and 2 1176 before that, so I really felt the difference), but when you can get PCBs+case+components, there's not much more to learn if you haven't done a home etch before or drilled you own ugly case or made your own mistakes with digikey.

I would love to see more home etch or bread board layouts that don't end up mass produced. This I think is the key to learning more, keeping things nonprofit, thus legal.

I got quite carried away again, sorry ;)
Was I off topic maybe?
 
I think it's natural for any forum to have newbies ask silly questions. But what has been bothering me lately - not just on this forum, but regarding the internet in general; this forum is actually better than most - is that people ask questions and then disappear until they have another question. They do not even try to contribute. The phrase "thanks in advance" has become a red flag for me. That phrase indicates that the person is not even prepared to kind of moderate their own thread. They ask a question and come back a few days later to collect possible answers. For them it's not people taking their time but "the net" answering their questions.

I think everyone asking questions should at least try to help out other people. Even if your knowledge is fairly limited, there may be a guy who ran into the very same kinds of problems. I know I asked fairly silly questions when I first came to this forum, but I've since been able to help some people with their stuff, and it's the same with quite a few people who came to this forum years ago. But the internet has changed in more recent times. It has gotten rare to see someone pass from newbie to someone who can answer certain questions. What I'm saying is: a forum is about doing stuff together, helping each other out. I'm glad we still have some gurus left, but we shouldn't rely those few to answer all questions.
 
Any internet based forum is probably going to "suffer" from the wide range of expectations and desires of the disparate folks that it attracts. I see the same thing that others see, a lot of folks that only want to take info and don't have much to contribute. I have also seen some pretty dismissive attitudes thrown at members who's only fault was to ask questions that showed their lack of knowledge, even when it was obvious that they were looking to learn.
I spend a lot of time on the forum learning, and look to the projects as a way to understand more about electronics. When i started i was a lifetime musician with NO electronics knowledge at all. I have read countless books, asked millions of questions since, and learned a ton along the way. My desire was always to learn, but in the beginning those simple clone "kits" were quite daunting to me, and i'm sure i asked many an idiotic question just trying to get enough knowledge to build on.
  I know that i will never have the expertise that some others on this forum have. I love that. I love that they employ their knowledge often to help others learn. I try to contribute here when i can, which isn't as often as i like. I mentor elsewhere, and i take the knowledge given here with a deep appreciation.
  I try to keep in mind that most people have good intentions, and in my 4 years hanging around here i have felt a sense of a community and that is important to its existence. I think its important to have grace with the gifts you have, and not think about
the few people that don't employ the same ethics.

Most folks here are good people, and it is really cool being able to scroll around and look through this wealth of information. I'm grateful for it and hope that anyone that gets annoyed with the bs can just shake it off and keep focused on the good things that come out and know that when they do contribute there are so many people that enjoy it on a knowledge/respect level
Ian
 
Another newbie here.  I have been building preamp and pedal kits for years.  Most of the preamps in my rack have been self built, but from kits.  On my last batch of preamps, I realized that I didn't truly understand why something was happening.  I have a pretty good idea as I have been working on simple circuits for a long time, but not enough to feel like I was doing more than painting by numbers.  It seemed like it was time to "graduate".  I enjoy these threads and have done tons of reading.  Much more reading than asking.  I'm beginning my first projects from this forum and have a new respect for the time it takes to source parts from many different suppliers and trying to figure out what the best power supply option is going to be, etc.  At the moment, the projects I'm working on are clones.  I realize this sparks some debate around here but I don't feel confident enough or sophisticated enough in my own understanding to take a complete jump from the kit world yet.  OTOH, after spending a few weeks reading through posts here, other research online, and electronics textbooks, I'm looking forward to etching my first boards and making some costly mistakes.  Getting cheap gear hasn't been my goal as every project I've built has been too rewarding and worth more to me personally than any dollar amount.  I always learn more and move closer to my goal of understanding my gear.  I do understand the frustrations of some of the longtime members here.  Recent threads about wanting to buy completed projects or get cheap labor have been surprising to me.  I sincerely appreciate this forum as I have gained so much from it in just the short time I have spent here, but it also reminds me that I have a very long way to go.  Thanks for providing a map!
 
May I ??

NewYorkDave said:
Some people just wanna build a clone and don't give a damn about learning anything about electronics. That's valid, too, but I choose not to humor those people since nobody's paying me a dime to post here, and I'd rather focus on helping someone who wants to learn something about the art--as opposed to a project studio owner who's just looking to save a few dollars by building an SSL clone.

This post is approximately 2 years old.
I quite agree with most of posts here.I'm a bit embarassed cause I feel directly concerned ... I know I ofently post stupid questions here , and do not even know how to use basic electronic laws  (because of lack of time to learn more.)

I would like to let all of you know I'm really gratefull for all things I can "learn" here . ;)

PS : where can I buy this electronics101 book???? ;D ;D ;D (I've searched before asking!)

Cheers!
Thibault.
 
RedNoise, look at the META - Tech Library:
http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=08785
(I would start with The Art Of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill for my part)

In real life, I often experienced that it is hard to get informations from skilled technicians.
I found myself asking twice and even more to get infos, the trick is to insist and try to show motivation and interest
(this is what worked for me anyway)
 
The Art of Electronics is what I'm wading through right now.  It's dense, but it's a lot better at explaining difficult concepts than most textbooks I've come across.  Maybe it'll even help me grasp impedance load resistors.
 
If there is one thing that everyone should know, it's Ohm's Law, but seemingly there are a large number of people here who fail to grasp it. It's simple, and it will help you a lot. Judging by my electronics builds from when I was fourteen and I did know Ohm's law, I'd shudder to think what "studio quality" gear some people are producing. On top of this, there's also the electrical safety factor. Pictures of quite a few death traps have been posted here before. And to think that some people sell these units on to others...
 

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