I've been involved in projects where I designed a circuit and built a prototype by point-to-point wiring. This was usually part of a whole system, one of several pieces of equipment. The entire project would go through an evaluation period and if it was successful, all the vendors had to quickly produce thousands of whatever it was they had designed. So I would have to come up with a few thousand silkscreened enclosures, circuit boards and all the components to populate them with fast.

If a single part wouldn't fit, it would amount to thousands of mis-ordered parts. I quickly realized this task was the most difficult of the project, way more difficult and time consuming than design work or building of the prototype. I would have never thought of procurement as being so daunting, but it is.

Don't anyone rat us out and admit to our wives that purchasing stuff takes real talent.

What I mean is: we would decide on a project and each build it to our own skill/price level. For a novice like me, the resources at hand would simply be invaluable. We could start with a very basic amp or preamp with technical, sourcing, troubleshooting, and listening discussions.

Granted there will only be a few people doing this in the beginning. But for people like me that learn better by doing than reading, I think it is an idea that could catch on......my $0.02....Colin

I've seen some posts in the Craftsmen about soldering and what-not, so it's definitely not just a woodworking forum. There is a lot of attention to wordworking there, but it's certainly not the single purpose. Electrical and metalworking hints and tid-bits are great subjects for that place too. Anything that helps a DIY builder with the actual nuts ad bolts fabrication and assembly of his gear are good to go there.

Then again, I like seeing tube circuit write-ups in the Tubes forums and chip and solid state circuits discussed in the Solid State forums. I guess there's a little bit of overlap. I know when I get my Stoetkit, I plan to take some photos of the assembly, and I'll probably post in the Tubes forum and/or in the FSAudio forum. Maybe make a post in one and a link in the other. One of these days when I ever get around to building my Seduction kit, I'll probably put a similar write up in the Turntable forum. I've got a couple coming in the next month or so for speakers too, but those will naturally need to go in the π Speakers forum.

I just think it's kind of fun to do these little pictorial write-ups, when I have time. I sure love seeing everyone else's write ups too, and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to do them!