L.a. in the old days.

[pucho812]

Nostalgia trip.
I miss the old days in l.a. there were a handful of places one could buy capacitors and resistors. Seems a waste to online order 2 x resistors of a single value.

 

[PermO]

That is a world wide phenomenon I guess... There used to be a very well utilized shop in my town, but it's gone.
The broadcast lab, gone, the very last remains of that were recently decimized.
HF shop is gone also.

There's one place down the road where I can get a Velleman resistor kit and some Chinese electrolitics.

On the other hand, I can imagine,... A guy walks in, sticks around for 15 minutes of small talk and a coffee, and walks out with two 10ct resistors.

Most of the surplus stores are also gone and the ones still there sell alieexpress electronics and switches.

 

[pucho812]

There are 2 spots left where I can get that stuff locally but they are far away.

 

[Rob Flinn]

Yes, this is irritating. Everything is mail order in the U.K I used to have an RS trade counter 3 miles from my house but it closed about 3 years ago. When placing mail orders I find myself always having to add a few items I didn't really need at the time on to orders to get to the free postage price break.

 

[Brian Roth]

In my city (pop. 48K) we used to have an electronics parts house. It was run by one older man who was pretty grumpy. His prices were very high, but when you need something, you just shrug.

He died a year ago, and I don't know all the story. A real estate company bought the building and contents (maybe from his widow or another relative?). A realtor friend (who also owns a studio here and an Ebay/Reverb store) and I went there last summer as a favor to the new owner.

We never knew how gigantic that store was, since all you would see walking in the front door was a very small lobby with a sales desk. Mr Grumpy would disappear from the desk and go get whatever we needed from the back room. The huge, poorly lit, dusty/musty back area was a maze of shelves with apparently semi-random inventory placement.

Mr. Grumpy was our last local parts source after the two Radio Shacks closed years back.

Bri

 

[Tubetec]

Radio shack ,
I happened to be in part of the world that existed for a while ,
I loved the place , walking in the door in my mid teens ,
back home a few independant electronics supply places existed off the back of the computer industry in the 90's ,
subsequently Maplin was the uptown store to get electronic parts off the shelf , thats gone along time now ,

 

[pucho812]

Today drove across town and was smart enough to call ahead of time. They had my resistors. Spent more in gas then for parts.

 

[Tubetec]

parts 10cents + diagnosis+delivery and fitting , thats a days work in itself ,

 

[pucho812]

parts 10cents + diagnosis+delivery and fitting , thats a days work in itself ,

Well in this case, it’s installing resistors due to a manufacturing error

 

[Ó Draighnáin]

We have a chain called "Jaycar" (in AU and NZ) that still sells components. You can buy things like transistors (I bought a whole lot of 2n3055s quite cheaply), zeners, trimpots, resistors, bulbs, potentiometers, cable, heat shrink, connectors (e.g. XLRs), screws, standoffs, perf board, terminals, heat sinks... the usual stuff.

It can be an expensive place to shop but there is one only about 2 mins drive from me which is pretty handy if you just need something (a one-off) in a hurry.

 

[cyrano]

My electronic parts store sells electric bikes these days. That store changed direction because the technical schools and a few businesses they were providing with parts, started ordering online.

I had three hardware stores in the neighborhood, all are gone. Too much low value stock. The premises have been sold to real estate developers. The owners retired.

 

[pucho812]

We have a chain called "Jaycar" (in AU and NZ) that still sells components. You can buy things like transistors (I bought a whole lot of 2n3055s quite cheaply), zeners, trimpots, resistors, bulbs, potentiometers, cable, heat shrink, connectors (e.g. XLRs), screws, standoffs, perf board, terminals, heat sinks... the usual stuff.

It can be an expensive place to shop but there is one only about 2 mins drive from me which is pretty handy if you just need something (a one-off) in a hurry.

I am familiar with Jaycar in name only from the early days of prodigy pro.
We had many places like that and one by one they all closed. The place near my house just closed. Nothing like a place that is a 5 minute car trip to grab unexpected necessities.
What’s left here is apex which is far and Torrence electronics which is far. I don’t mind the drive but to go an hour each way just to pick up a couple of resistors can be a bit much,

 

[Ó Draighnáin]

There are two small cities next to each other where I live (about 20 minutes drive apart and both have populations between about 50,000 - 100,000). Each city has a Jaycar. The kids that work at the local Jaycar told me that the owner of the chain specifically wants to maintain the components section (on some sort of principle basis).

Maybe because these shops are in provincial NZ (next stop Antarctica) they can survive. Seems weird that L.A, doesn't have lots of options. And it suck not having an emergency shop close by. Usually when you need that resistor you need it badly (in a possibly OCD sort of way).

 

[MountCyanide]

Yeah it sucks that All Electronics is gone too now. They went full-on mail order for several years due to the lockdowns. Seems the walk-in customers never quite returned when they eventually opened back up. And at that point, everyone just kept on ordering from Mouser or Digikey. Shame.

 

[PermO]

Parts anxiety,.. when the stuff in your head is not on your bench.

 

[Tubetec]

Less and less stuff now uses through hole components so its like a self fullfilling prophecy ,
new lamps for old ......

 

[PermO]

It's not all sad...

For DIY scale, one off, you'll probably find your parts for years to come.

SMT revived analog !
All these analog synths you can buy now at a decent price is pretty cool, those wold be impossible in the trough hole world, or it would be a huge expensive unstable monster.
Many IC's that were gone, have now returned in a surface mount package.
You can design with BBD's again.

And not to mention the wide variety in tubes that are, again in production.

 

[Tubetec]

You only have to look at the piles of electronics waste at the collection sites to know were digging ourselves a huge hole ,
SMT and DIY , they dont sit to happy really either ,

Price of tubes is through the roof and quality of new production seems to have taken a fall back to the bad old days of Chinese tubes again .

 

[pucho812]

Yeah it sucks that All Electronics is gone too now. They went full-on mail order for several years due to the lockdowns. Seems the walk-in customers never quite returned when they eventually opened back up. And at that point, everyone just kept on ordering from Mouser or Digikey. Shame.

Well Torrence electronics has huge selection but for me it’s a minimum hour each way. Apex is about that as well but harder to find stuff these days.

 

[JohnRoberts]

My nearest rat shack is 20 miles away and not worth the trip. Over the years I have learned to depend on my back room store of random parts.

JR