moments to treasure from a chinese ebay order stompbox life.

[tabbycat]

that moment when you recieve some freaky-obscure ic through the post from ebay china and can't actually remember what you ordered it for.

that moment when you are putting together something you ordered all the weird bits for three months ago, and had assumed had arrived, and you realise that one bit never arrived.

that moment when you contact the seller to say 'where is the (above) bit i ordered three months ago and never arrived?' and they reply with a message along the lines of:

'my dear, we are so sorry that you loyal customer etc etc etc ... would you be so kind as to wait patiently another week/ten days/'til hell freezes over to see if it arrives?'.

any other moments out there?

[Beaker]

Done No.1 - had to put a post up on here to see if anyone could suggest what they were for.

BTW, did you get to see Woven Skull at the Hope and Ruin last night? I sent you an email saying you ought to go as they are amazing.

[notnews]

About a year or so ago when I first started down this road... full of stompboxes at its end but littered with half-built boards and chopped up resistor bits at its beginning.. I placed an eBay order for one of those metal film resistor assortments that had something like 100 different values at 10 pieces of every value. It was only like 10 bucks and I thought "sweet.. good way to get started".

When the package arrived I noticed that the thin strips at both ends of each 10x resistor pack were unlabeled. Hmm.. "the eBay listing showed that each 10-pack was labeled with its value". Oh well, I won't throw a fit, I'll just measure each strip. (totally forgot about the color-coding..).

After about 20 strips in, sampling one resistor from each 10-strip, I realized that every strip was the same value. 750Kohm. After remembering the color-coding scheme I took a look at the other strips.

It turned out that I received only three unique values... I got about 800x 750K resistors, 150x 330K resistors, and like 50x of another value. I couldn't believe it. I took pictures and emailed the chinese seller..

A week later I got another package in the mail, each strip present and labeled with its value.

All in all things worked out, and now I have more 750K resistors than I could possibly use. Just thankful he didn't ask me to pay for shipping again or something. At the time I was pissed but only 10 dollars was at stake... I've read some things here and on other forums where people have been screwed out of much more.

[Silver Blues]

Knock on wood I've never had a bad experience like this with eBay sellers. The worst thing that's ever happened to me eBay-wise is that one time I ordered some NEC EA2-5SNJ and the seller sent me some EA2-5 (totally the wrong thing), then promptly disappeared from eBay so I couldn't even make a claim. It was only like $4 though so it wasn't that big a deal.

Those resistor assortments are actually kind of nice if you can find a good one. I bought one and it was enough to keep me fully stocked on resistors pretty much until now when I ran out of 1M. I just bought 50 1M resistors from Tayda

[tabbycat]

hey beaker, glad to hear of a fellow sufferer. mine was an ms-20 filter. but the plot thickens as another seller has just cancelled my order for another essentail bit because i wouldn't give them my phone number. do they intend to post this ic to me or text it to me as an emoji? so will reorder (1234567890 etc).

btw, have just checked my junk folder.

is this yours?

"This shocking free video shows you how to make any woman
want to fuck you....No matter what you look like."

or there's an ntl one?

[Beaker]

is this yours?

"This shocking free video shows you how to make any woman
want to fuck you....No matter what you look like."



Umm, noo.


or there's an ntl one?


That's mine. sorry you missed it comrade.

[tabbycat]

hey beaker, just wanted to be sure.

had a listen to some. very mellow. reminds me of a cross between prime can and something soft and west coast like grizzly bear. pretty good. and definitely an interesting live prospect.
alas i'm not fit for gig-going atm. waiting for spinal surgery, so housebound really.

last great gig i saw was disappears (with steve shelley from sonic youth on drums) in a tiny club (100-ish capacity) in my home town in 2011. they played a blinder. i think they have changed a bit since and shelley has moved on, but very interesting then. dark and broody psychedelic loops within loops filtered through miles of reverb. sort of a post-millennial shoegaze-hawkwind with krautrock aspects, if that's a thing. they took the little venue to another planet. hard to post something entirely representative as everything of theirs on record is really just a thumbnail sketch for something far more expansive live. three minutes on the album become twelve live. maybe this for atmosphere.



last band i really wanted to see was the savages when they played ten minutes drive from my house a couple of months ago. had wanted to see them for ages but just couldn't face it. too sick. was gutted. boring being ill. don't do it.