Who needs Mouser or Digikey? Featured

Fun, an old-fashioned general store with gadgets. Baby chickens and DVMs.

Mouser and Digikey are sorta useful multi-vendor search engines.

For non-production parts (and a few production parts!) Amazon is great. Better than driving to a mall, parking, and hoping to find something.

Same for office supplies and chocolates and cookies.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

IIRC it was called Tandy in the UK. When I lived in Germany, there was Conrad. They were very good stockists of components and certainly a lot better in that regard than Maplin in Britain. I wonder if Maplin are still going? I can't be bothered to look.and care still less.

Still around, but nowadays found in some Jessops and London Camera Exchange shops, as well as online.

More years ago than I care to remember, my main source of components was Tiny's (in Dalston, North London). As it happens, it's where Alan Sugar used to get his electronic stuff according to his autobiography. Occasionally, I used the surplus shops in Tottenham Court Road and Lisle Street.

A Radio Shack in Albuquerque saved my bacon one time. I was on location and needed a couple of largish caps to fix a VFD pickup problem, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. It didn’t matter that they were Chinese crap and way way overpriced—I was glad to get them.

Other than that, I hadn’t bought anything but the occasional battery or RCA phono plug from them since I was a boy, This despite their being two blocks from my house for 25 years.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs (who thought a 50kΩ/V multimeter was pretty cool, in about 1973)

Back in the day, I used their stuff when needed. I could ride my bicycle to their store.

But they were widely called "Radio S**t" for a reason.

Lafayette Radio was middling, and Allied carried the good stuff.

Joe

There used to be some fantastic electronic/radio shops in TCR way back

That's the sort of time I'm referring to (my first visit to TCR would have been in '60 or '61). Of course, there was still quite a lot of WW2 surplus around then at pretty low prices. There were some good communications receivers IIRC, but many required some work. Proops and Z&I Aero were the main sources of surplus in TCR; I can't remember the names of those in Lisle St (there were other "services" offered in Lisle St...). I was told once that Z&I Aero was a front for certain Russian activities. I've no idea if it was true or not, but it couldn't have been supplying much money if it was. It did sell Russian-made valves.

They were dreadful. I remember a 5Z4G suddenlymaking a "ping" noise followed by a fireworks display. The pinch had split when it got hot.

They still turn up secondhand but I would never buy one.

Not the same Maplin. They sold out to private equity, who loaded them up with debt and then they went bust in 2018. The bits got dismembered and the outfit that now owns the name just slaps it on stuff from China like many other brands.

In the bankruptcy sale, some enterprising folks bought out their stock for pennies and have been dribbling it out via ebay. Some of the Maplin branded stuff is new-very-old-stock.

Theo

I see RS updated their website. No more electronic parts. More of a bestbuy/staples feel.

Cheers