Recycled Chips and Parts

[Paul in Colorado]

I volunteer recycling consumer electronics and take apart a lot of old VCR's stereo components and the like. Are there any chips or parts in these that may be desirable to DIY pedal builders?

[Ben Harmless]

My uneducated opinion is that it depends on how old the stuff is.

The older, the better, in terms of what might be salvageable. I would assume that most of the IC chips would be less-than-useful to the DIYer unless he or she wanted to design something around them. What would interest me most would be the larger resistors, capacitors, transistors, and transformers.

Sounds like a cool gig. I'd love to find something similar in my area. What kind of organization does something like that?

I recently harvested the drivers out of a pair of computer speakers, and kept a bunch of the components therein, including a nice 120v-12v ac transformer. Now I keep my eye out for stuff to take apart. I with I had all the stuff I ripped apart as a kid.

[11 Gauge]

It would have to be significantly older in most cases to prove to be fruitful, IMO.

Even for silicon transistors for fuzzes, typically the very early 70's is the limit. And obviously germanium devices are going to be older stuff.

As far as IC's go, there's the LM308N, but once again it's typically going to be in much older gear, since that chip is dismal for hi fi applications. And analog delay chips won't be present in something like a VCR.

I know that folks will tear apart old radios for diodes that are either hard to find or obsolete, but it's a lot of work to remove those tiny buggers. And unless they conduct at a drastically different voltage than most common types (400mV, 550mV, 650mV), then it's probably not worth the effort. But if you have a diode tester and manage to find some that are from about 750mV - 1000mV, they might be worth extracting.

Actually, jFET's are always useful in builds (J201, 2N5457, etc.) but unless you can easily snip them off of boards (with enough leads left for reusing), I wouldn't bother with those, either.

And I simply wouldn't bother with caps or resistors. Both are dirt cheap brand new. And polarized caps have a shelf life, anyway.

But you never know - it might be worth it to hit some of the other DIY sites and check their sourcing/trading forums, to see what sort of stuff they're looking for.

[Ben Harmless]

Originally Posted by 11 Gauge

And I simply wouldn't bother with caps or resistors. Both are dirt cheap brand new.

This is, of course, absolutely correct. I personally just dig the idea of putting something that's been discarded to a new use. I always wanted to build a fuzz out of microwave or something. A reverb from the coils in my toaster would be really fun...

[metulmykul]

Originally Posted by Ben Harmless

... I always wanted to build a fuzz out of microwave or something. A reverb from the coils in my toaster would be really fun...

That would be awesome!

[G-log]

Reticon SAD512 or SAD1024 ic's! let me know when you find some of those

[11 Gauge]

Originally Posted by Ben Harmless

I personally just dig the idea of putting something that's been discarded to a new use.

I hear ya - I'm the same way, if time permits. And film caps are certainly recyclable. Occasionally it's also cool what you will find, because they will be components by companies that are out of business.

And - time permitting, I will harvest every semiconductor that I can, and sort them later. Even simple switching trannies or logic chips can be used in builds. Just remember to drop a heat sink on them, or your efforts may be in vain.

[Paul in Colorado]

The place I volunteer is called "Eco-Thrift." They recycle consuler electronics at $.45 a pound. I get first grabs at anything that might be useful. I test things that may be fixable or are good as well as take apart things for recycling. I've gotten a bunch of cool things. A Morley volume pedal, a couple of cassette 4-track Porta-Studios tuners, some good tubes out of a dead tape recorder, a NAD Cassette deck...

I need to get a soldering iron set up there so I can harvest some things. Most IC's don't have sockets but if unsoldered they could be used.