Anyone have a source for through hole 2n5457?

[Snare227]

Hey guys...

I'm trying to find a good source for the 2n5457 in the through hole form.  I know they are getting harder and harder to track down, but I'm wanting to get a little stock pile before I inevitably have to start soldering up some little buggers with the adapter boards.  I know there have been some fakes found from certain Chinese dealers on Ebay, so I'm hoping to stick with some reliable sources.  Mouser has them for around $0.65 USD if you buy 100 at a time.  $70 might be a bit pricey for a small bag of transistors, but then again that will do 100 Rat style pedals... so how can you put a price on that?   If anyone knows any other replacements that will drop in place of the 2N5457 that may be cheaper and work as well that would be great too.

[rocket88]

2 places that have fair prices.

1 tayda - http://www.taydaelectronics.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=2n5457 currently out of stock, but should show up again

2 smallbear - http://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/transistor-fet-2n5457/ also currently out of stock, but should show up again too.

i would avoid chinese sellers on ebay for any fets, as a lot of people have gotten screwed, especially recently. i just did an ebay search for US sellers and their are prices are $1 each and up, which is too much.

[Beaker]

I know you don't really want to hear this,  but I am going to say it anyway - bite the bullet and go SMD. Much cheaper - even when you include the adapter boards, much more consistent, and hand on heart, much easier to solder than you would think.

Get some boards from Chromosphere in Australia, and the SMD 5457 and J201 from wherever has them at a good price. Honestly, you won't regret it.

[traktop]

rocket88 wrote

1 tayda - http://www.taydaelectronics.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=2n5457 currently out of stock, but should show up again

Fairchild vs Vishay...?

[rocket88]

I've gotten both and they're both equally good and within spec. So I would save money and get the cheaper of the two.

[cylens]

They've been out of stock for months at Tayda... same with J201

I've decided to order SMDs and after a good laugh when I saw the size of the thing, I realized it wasn't hard at all...

[Muadzin]

As far as I know Tayda has been out of 2N5457's and J201's for more then a year. I highly doubt that they will get any back in stock in like forever. Personally I think whatever stocks there were have been picked dry by bigger players that need them commercially. I wouldn't be surprised if Catalinbread and Wampler have warehouses hoarded full of them as their builds often used these.

As Beaker said, bite the bullet and get the SMD counterpart with adapter boards from Chromosphere. They're good, you don't have to worry about Chinese fakers and he is very reliable. Always a pleasure to deal with him. Including on forums. It looks scary the first time, until you realize afterwards its actually not that scary at all.

[rocket88]

jesus. i haven't had to order any in a fairly long time since i got a decent stock. but, if that's the case i'll be going *gulp* SMD...

[cylens]

I soldered my first SMD Jfet on an adapter board (musikding) on first try, without gel flux and with 1mm solder. If you knew me, that would be the best proof that ANYONE can do it. I just tinned one pad of the adapter, positionned the transistor, applied the iron, and that was it... then proceeded as usual

[Beaker]

I wasn't laughing when I first saw the size of them, I was crap scared!

All you need is a good magnifier and decent lighting, and it is suprisingly easy. The paste flux is a big help, but not essential.

[Gentle_Jack_Jones]

Jameco has them for .89 each or .79 if you order 10 or more. They work. I ordered some from Polida to try to save money, but that was a mistake. I just put together a Catalinbread Formula 5. Almost half of the Polida 2n5457's didn't work at all, and the rest had much less gain than the Jameco 2N5457's. So I just ordered a bunch more from Jameco.

Could somebody supply a link to the aforementioned Chromosphere that sells the SMD adapters? A Google search didn't turn it up for me. Thanks in advance!

[Sensei Tim]

Every single j201 and 2n5457 that I've ordered from tayda has been garbage.

Go smd.

100 from mouser is like $20 and get the adapter boards from oshpark.  I mount them on 0.1" pitch headers from tayda.

[Beaker]

Here you go:

http://www.diyguitarpedals.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=286

They come to you in a "card" form, so if you order 100 like I did, you get just one card of 100 individual boards. you just snap or cut off what you need. this actually makes it easier to deal with, as you can (for example) solder up 10 JFETs in one go, them snap them off. It's much easier to solder them onto a large stable board, than it is to do it after you have cut them into individual boards.

Ilike the header pin idea Tim - I never even thought of that, so I will give it a try. I have been mounting them on component leg offcuts so far.

[Sensei Tim]

I used to use component legs too but got frustrated at how flimsy they felt.  Using headers makes it rock solid, but you have to do a little bit of work to swap out jfets.  The height is just enough to clear a typical box cap that might happen to be right beside the jfet.

On Friday, March 25, 2016, Beaker [via Guitar FX Layouts] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here you go:

http://www.diyguitarpedals.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=286

They come to you in a "card" form, so if you order 100 like I did, you get just one card of 100 individual boards. you just snap or cut off what you need. this actually makes it easier to deal with, as you can (for example) solder up 10 JFETs in one go, them snap them off. It's much easier to solder them onto a large stable board, than it is to do it after you have cut them into individual boards.

Ilike the header pin idea Tim - I never even thought of that, so I will give it a try. I have been mounting them on component legs so far.

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[cylens]

musikding (germany) sells the boards as "kits" with angled pin headers: http://www.musikding.de/3-Pin-strip-angled

2.8 euros for 10 boards+10 pin headers

[rocket88]

i've been thinking, and the one real issue i do see with SMD fets, well any smd transistors, is that for some layouts things may have to be swapped due to the extra space they will take up by sitting horizontally.

[Beaker]

I honestly don't think it's an issue. You can mount them vertically (at right angles to the circuit board) most of the time as they don't sit up any higher than an electro cap.

If you have resistors or diodes right next to the transistor, you can mount horizontally (parallel to the circuit board), with the SMD board "floating" above the adjacent resistors. Again it does not sit any higher than electro cap.

I've had a look through a whole bunch of the biggest, most crowded builds on here, without finding any problems, and can only see potential problems with layouts like this, due to the caps and trimmer around Q1. Even with this one, you could fit it without problems as long as you think about it and eye it up first.

[rocket88]

i didn't realize that you could mount them vertically, and was thinking that if you could do that it wouldn't be an issue. that's really good news. thank man

just have to say that since we've now accepted the use of SMD parts, while be it only a few of them, but i don't want to see anyone mention the dreaded "d" work (digital). lol

[Sensei Tim]

I've been thinking about getting. Spin semi fv-1 DSP Dev board.

Sorry ;)

On Friday, March 25, 2016, rocket88 [via Guitar FX Layouts] <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> i didn't realize that you could mount them vertically, and was thinking
> that if you could do that it wouldn't be an issue. that's really good news.
> thank man
>
> just have to say that since we've now accepted the use of SMD parts, while
> be it only a few of them, but i don't want to see anyone mention the
> dreaded "d" work (digital). lol
>
> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Champion-City-Effects/478986288944366?fref=ts
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> https://instagram.com/championcityeffects/
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[Beaker]

Zach, have a look at this photo:



It's my ROG Ginger build - page 31 on the "show your pedal guts" thread. As you can see, three of the JFET boards are mounted vertically, and one had to be mounted horizontally, hovering over the diodes.

Bear in mind that Chromosphere's boards are both smaller and thinner than these boards that I got from Bitsbox, so will fit into a tighter space - and they are the correct pinout so don't need any leg-twisting.

Don't worry, you won't hear the D-word from me.