RS stopped manufacturing raspberies

I don't doubt it, but Chinese crap is Chinese crap wherever you buy it from. For example the Banana Pi boards are sold on Aliexpress by SinoVoip (among others), the manufacturer, so they're obviously the same quality that you'll get elsewhere, whether that's good enough or not.

In the case of the ROCK Pi X I'd be most concerned about the omission of a heatsink.

Cheap power transistors are classics for Chinese fakes. I think the Chinese-brand SBCs are more likely to be legit, though I'm suspicious of the sellers offering Raspberry Pis. Reading the reviews helps a lot, hopefully you left a negative one about those transistors.

I don't know what an AR is. Why don't you tell us why you don't think that it is not the reason at all?

Hey, I am not disagreeing with anything to say. I bought a cheap Chinese electric guitar last year. The woodwork was fabulous, the machine heads and bridge were not bad, the fretboard needed attention from a light hammer, but the pickups and control knobs went straight into the bin.

After installing copper foil screening and NEW Chinese pickups, and knobs, it is now really fabulous.

A $1000 guitar for about $350.

I've bought a load of stuff from China. Lots of it is superb. Some of it is utter junk. Caveat Emptor...

I bought a Chinese made Guild jumbo recently for €580. It's all but identical to the €3500 American made version[1] (same woods, same construction, same machine heads, plays and sounds the same - less bling) no need to change anything the pickup is by Fishman and it was perfectly set up off the shelf. Of course it helps no end that Guild set the quality control standards - and *that* is what determines whether you get crap or something great out of China.

Well done then. Nice guitar. Mine was way cheaper than that and I knew that areas would be sub standard at that price. But then people by $3500 Fenders and spend another $1000 on a luthier to set them up properly.

It is the most expensive one I own. I have a wonderful Epiphone Studio Gothic that only cost me €200 (second hand of course) and an Ovation I got for €250 which eats batteries if I use the electronics, sounds great unamplified and can only be played sitting down curled round it thanks to the bowl shaped back - I often wonder why I bought it.

I know of luthiers who would charge less than that to teach you how to do it yourself - setting up a guitar properly isn't exactly difficult unless you go to the extent of filing the frets to achieve perfection, even that isn't really hard as long as you have the tools and the patience (i've done it once with great results - but I built that guitar from scratch).

My oldest guitar (just over 48 years now) is currently in the hands of a luthier and violin maker having the neck reset and the bridge straightened which will cost me about €350 including setting it up afterwards. That guitar cost be £34 back in 1974 but it out performed everything in the shop less than £130. I was somewhat shocked to realise that what I had always thought of as a cheap but very nice guitar cost the equivalent of about €450 in today's money. Guitars have become very cheap.

I'm building a scratch 12 string electric. Will have to learn all that stuff.

yeah. I think my eko 12 string from 1971 was less than £50.

The most vital tool you will need is a *really* good straight edge longer than the fretboard - although I can't help thinking that in these days of cheap lasers it should be possible to arrange a beam with a wide level edge to highlight where it needs filing down.

Saw a video of a pro luthier who had such a beast It was a spirit level from a dirt cheap DIY store. He said 'its just as good ' :-)

Fret rockers will pretty much ID the high spots.

Damn that's a good idea - even the cheapest once have a good machined edge, the thing I used was a reference edge from the metalwork shop.

Dunno if this is much use or not for guitar frets, but:

One of my more useful tools for getting a good wing profile on a model aircraft wing is a 'Great Planes' Easy Touch bar-sander, which I'd guess would also do the job you need. It is an alloy extrusion in the form of an

Permagrit also do double sided sanding blocks of up to 560mm long, but for around 46 quid.

Probably not - the perfect fret is round topped with the peak in a dead straight line across the fretboard (let's not talk about curved fretboards) at exactly the same height all the way across nice and smooth and perfectly flush at the ends. The idea being to stop the string at exactly the right distance and not have it buzz against any others.

Really fine files of various shapes are the usual abrasive tools, it's a slow painstaking job and you will be reminded of every single place you came short of perfection every time you play the guitar. If your immediate response to this is to make another and do it better - rinse and repeat ad infinitum - then one day people will start calling you a luthier, otherwise you're probably a musician who will find a luthier to do it next time.

Permagrit are great. I tend to have several on the go for MY model planes and indeed all sorts of odd other jobs.

The problem with being too anal about a guitar neck is that the ideal shape is in fact not flat, but slightly bowed away from the strings, so that fret clearance increases towards the bridge.

However that is put in afterwards using e string tension that is acting against an adjustable truss rod.

But the truss rod doesn't work so well at the ends, o its traditional to have the frets fall away a little towards the bridge...

Which is why you pay luthiers several hundred dollars to make an average guitar play like a million bucks

I think its a but easier to describe the processes in order. First of all you want to get the fretboard itself flat in the long dimensions and curved to the right radius in the other, right being comfortable for YOU.

Secondly the frets need to be cut and radiused slightly *more* than the fretboard, so that when tapped in with a spot of glue in the middle there is no tendency for the ends to lift

Now you use a fret sanding bar to level the fret tops. Usually by inking the frets and sanding gently with a dead flat bar till all the ink has gone.

Your frets are now level, but the tops are of variable width which destroys intonation and 'one point of contact', so the frets need

This consists in marking the frets tops *again* with a sharpie and filing the sides so that all that is left of the fret top is a thin black sharpie line bang in the middle. This is the bit that stops the string.

Then (having sorted out the sides of the frets so they don't rip your hands to pieces) you can polish the frets gently to allow for easy smooth string bending.

In this process you may decide to sand the bridge end frets a little more for better string clearance.

Then you have to set the nut up, and the bridge height and the truss rod, and the saddle positions.....

Its all online, none of it is rocket science, but going through it patiently and carefully is - well unusual for most people. You have to love the process and be ecstatic about precision. And be guided by past experience - why is a bass string 2.2mm clearance, not 1.5mm? Cos mostly that is just enough to stop it buzzing. And so on.

I've also used shorter, 12" Permagrit blocks for general modelling use.

However, when I switched to carbon wings for my F1A competition gliders I needed a much longer, lighter sanding bar and that's when I got one of the Great Planes 33 inch sanding bars.

Building a set of carbon F1A wings is a lot different from traditional wing construction, but basically you assemble all wing panels with the ribs a bit tall, and then use the sanding bar to fair the upper surface to exactly match the carbon D-box assembly forming the front of the wing, and the carbon strip trailing edge before adding carbon cap strips to the top of the ribs.

These wings are very strong: during a launch you're pulling at least 20 Kg on the towline - the minimum allowed weight for an F1A model is is 415g, but building a full-race 2.5 m span carbon F1A model, complete with electronic d/t timer, radio tracker and circle tow hook that light is hard, so minw usually weight 435g or so.

If you want to see these wings are built, look here:

Mine was purchased with a case that has a thick slab of aluminum on the side nearest the SoC, with a thermal pad facing in (to make contact with the SoC) and some short fins on the outside. I haven't had any thermal issues with it in the year and a half (?) I've been running it.