[sdiy] Death of DIY?

[Magnus Danielson]

From: "Paul Schreiber" <synth1 at airmail.net>
Subject: [sdiy] Death of DIY?
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 13:45:12 -0500

Dear Paul,

> <<note: I am an old fart>>

So noted. Count me in as a fairly young fart then... (31 on Sat.)

Now, to some degree I agree with you... but to counter-balance I will
also try to find counter-examples, just for the sake of possibly
making us aware of what we can do.

> The slow death is due to several factors, including:
> 
> a) lack of the great "gee whiz!" factor in people under 30yrs old. I
> think many of the DIYers were in grade school in 1970 at the height
> of Moog Mania. A nice stereo was 8 months of saving (only doctors
> and RICH PEOPLE had credit cards). Ham radio was still a large DIY
> community.

Indeed. Back then you where stunned by the complexity of something.
Today we get stunned by how simple things can be, or how complex
things became back then.

Many consider Synth-DIY inherently complex and inconsevibly
difficult. The experience I have from the ASM-1 and SAS-modular stuff
and surely many of the MOTM people is that it doesn't need to be that
way. I've had contact with many guys (sorry, I know of no gals that
done ASM-1s... prove me wrong - PLEASE!) building the ASM-1 and also
the SAS-VCO, and this have been maybe their first or second project
after soldering cables (badly). Just the sheer joy of building
something is there... they go on an adventure they are not sure they
will survive... and many of them are below 30, some even below 20
years or age!

I have been supprised just by the amount of people interested in the
SAS-VCOs, which is a local Swedish thing.

> b) affluent parents. All you young pups have computers by the time
> you are 12yrs old. You are so ingrained with Nintendo/PS/etc that
> you can't even comprehend an Evans & Sutherland graphics cabinet
> that used to cost $1.3million, and have LESS power than a
> GeForce2. You get cell phones, MP3 players ,and cracked copiesof
> Reason. The parents of us old farts had NOTHING. You had to EARN
> (gasp!) money, and at $1.25/hr DIY was looking good. I was estatic
> in1977 when I gota job for $4/hr and could send Digikey like
> $15/month for parts to build Electronotes circuits.

Right. Kids today in USA, Canada and West Europe are usually quite
well off.

But I've found that many of them wonders what's more after they toyed
with their computer. Also, if they are into music, they get interested
in analogue synths (eventually), then they look at the price of a
MiniMoog and they start to wonder if there isn't a cheaper way. This
tends to lead them into seeking (but not necessarilly finding) the
Synth-DIY path.

Again, if these kids gets the oppertunity and support, they might take
the step. Most of these kids allready knows how to use the Internet,
finding things through Google, handling email-lists etc. After
drooling big pools over the stuff that they seen others built
themselfs (like Jürgen and Jörgen has), seeing various projects,
schematics, hints, tips, scraps, some might get on to it. By providing
the information and being available on lists and *KINDLY* answering
NEWBE quiestions we can help them.

> c) lack of patience. Stuff doesn't work, and you are actually better
> off to fix it. There is one WONDERFUL thing about eBay: it totally
> destroyed the 1980-2000 era of rip-off test equipment dealers. Tek
> 465s for $150? GET ONE!! Put it on Daddy's VISA card :)  A friend
> just bought a $3400 HP freq counter (new in 1985) for $45 and it
> works *perfectly*. Pre-eBay, I personally spent over $46,000 on test
> equipment. The *exact same* equipment today on eBay is roughly
> $2,000.

Right. The preferred tools are a multimeter and a scope. They can even
be pretty crappy, but as long as they give you a hint and you can get
them into different ranges, then they are surely better than nothing.
Frequency counter is a luxury, mine is overkill with 5-6 digits more
than I need. You can get a long way by tuning by ear. That I have a
habit of using my counter is another things...

Interestingly I've seen kids spending insanely amount of time
working without scope and only a crappy multimeter as a friend trying
to figure out what the hell went wrong. When they eventually get help
and it proves to be a fairly simple fault, they really go bright lite
happy home... there really are kids out there that do all the
beginners misstakes and learn as they go.

The DIY field is certainly not what it used to be. I'm not sure it
will be as common as before. I've even starting to give up on
wide-spread DIY-computer programming! However, I think there will
allways be a group of people that is interested in pursuing DIY, and
there is many things we can do to help them up on the road. Some of
them we allready do, some of them we might consider doing or doing
better.

For my own sake, I actually enjoy teching people things. My best
reward is when people are happy for having learnt something and seeing
that they have extended thier abilities to do things. This gives me a
kind of warm and fuzzy feeling. I often learn things better in order
to help people out with things, so I benefit from it too. I have a
ever-increaing library, but I don't have time to read all books. But
when I need info, I usually dig out a few books and read up on that
particular subject, and then I suddenly know it well. Some stuff I
know in my sleep thought. Possibly I drag it in my self-convection.

Cheers,
Magnus