[Rumble_b]

Hey guys. I'm looking for a 1/4" input jack but I need it to be nylon or plastic. I know that they are out there but I can't find one anywhere. Anyone know where to get one??

Thanks

 

[Wild Bill]

Hey guys. I'm looking for a 1/4" input jack but I need it to be nylon or plastic. I know that they are out there but I can't find one anywhere. Anyone know where to get one??

Thanks

I really don't know of any distributors left near Stouffville. There's not many electronic stores that will allow counter trade left at all! They've mostly gone strictly to industrial accounts.

There's still a few in Mississauga. Your problem is going to be that insulated jacks are not a common industry item. Most times the order desk person won't know what you're talking about.

You might try on line. You can google up Electrosonic on Victoria Park in Scarborough. They handle online orders and are in Canada. They don't like doing any research for you. The customer is expected to have come up with a brand and part number. Their website is not too bad so you may be able to find out quickly if they even stock insulated jacks.

If you are willing to order from the States you have a LOT more options! Guaranteed that http://www.tubesandmore.com will have it. They are called Antique Radio Supply and carry a great selection of stuff for tubeheads. You can also try googling for Hoffman Amps.

The thing about buying online from Stateside is that you know you are going to get clipped for extra charges. If you don't mind letting them ship US Air Mail it will only be a bit over $5, plus GST and PST. It will take 1 day to reach the American border and then Canada Customs and Canada Post will take about 2 weeks more to get it to your door.

I find that if you order about $100 worth or more the brokerage cost gets swamped out but I'm always ordering for my service business. Still, once you get to the Antique Radio site there's so much there not just in parts but in guitar parts, footswitches, and lots of other stuff that it's easy to spend a yard.

Maybe someone else has a Canadian source close to you. Not saying there isn't one, just damn glad it's you spending time looking and not me! :tongue:

 

[Rumble_b]

Thanks Bill. I kinda figured I'd end up buying from the states. I really hate how most places up here wont sell to the public. I found a few but they usually have crazy prices when looking for just a few caps or other parts. I'm pretty lucky though. My dad teaches electronics at Durham collage. So every time I go to my parents he always has some random caps, resistors or other stuff for me. But he can't get the jack either. He's been pretty good at getting just about anything I've needed for a guitar, amp or pedal.

 

[Wild Bill]

Thanks Bill. I kinda figured I'd end up buying from the states. I really hate how most places up here wont sell to the public. I found a few but they usually have crazy prices when looking for just a few caps or other parts. I'm pretty lucky though. My dad teaches electronics at Durham collage. So every time I go to my parents he always has some random caps, resistors or other stuff for me. But he can't get the jack either. He's been pretty good at getting just about anything I've needed for a guitar, amp or pedal.

It's all money, RB. The world has changed. There's just so few ordinary folks buying electronic parts that it actually costs an industrial distributor more than they'd make to sell to them!

Most electronic parts cost pennies. A manufacturer would buy his caps by the bucketful. A guy changing the tone cap in his Strat would buy ONE! Even if you marked it up to a whole dollar it still doesn't amount to anything.

Notice how even Radio Shack (or whatever name they use now) has drastically reduced the parts they carry? When they first started parts were a BIG part of their inventory!

I came from that sales world so I know firsthand how things changed. Thank Heavens for the InterNet and online stores! They make up enough volume by literally having the whole world as their market. How many insulated jacks could you sell in Stouffville? Wanna mortgage your soul and open up a store?

A friend of mine owns a local variety store and we were talking the other day about his magazine rack. When we were kids there were all kinds of magazines for various hobbies. There was Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics and a raft of others for those who built their own amps, wooden deck chairs, dragsters and who knows what all! Lots of guys built their own hifi speaker enclosures that performed well enough to blow the doors off the particle board little crapboxes we see in the big stores today.

People had more leisure time but more importantly they grew up with the idea to actually do things for themselves, rather than just buy it. No self-repecting teenager would pay for someone to do his oil change! He'd laugh at the very idea and crawl under his car himself.

Anyway, today in his rack we found ONE magazine that offered articles on building! It was Model Railroading. That's it! Everything else was either all about style, ads disguised as reviews or what's been happening to Paris Hilton.

How many of your friends actually make the effort to practise and learn some guitar? How many would actually want to make a pedal or an amp? You couldn't tear them away from their Xbox, I'll bet.

I blame schools for much of this. It seems today that you're expected to have at least a 6 week course to be able to even wipe your butt! The other side of this is that if you don't have the certificate then you can't possibly know how to wipe your own butt...

Don't believe me? A farmer friend of mine told me that under Ontario Law if he wants to cut down trees on his own farm he's expected to take a course and get a certificate in tree felling. If he wants to sell a cord or two of cut firewood to his neighbour that requires a different certificate with a different course!

I have teachers for relatives and during the early 90's I'd hear them bitch about how could they be expected to learn anything about using personal computers unless the school board would put them through courses. I would just bite my tongue and shake my head. In my crowd we'd never heard of taking a course to run a computer. We just turned them on and started to learn! It just wasn't that big a deal to us. You would expect that it wouldn't be that big a deal to someone in the learning industry either but it does seem to be so. I hope they can produce a butt-wiping certificate!

I'm a bit off topic but I just wanted to explain why there aren't any easy local sources for your jacks anymore. People have changed and stores change with them or go under.

Send me a private message with your address and I'll mail you a Marshall style jack. I'm just glad to see a young guy having the initiative to DO something on his own!

 

[Rumble_b]

Thanks Bill!! I've always loved building stuff myself. Doesn't matter what. My truck is far from stock, all my musical stuff gets worked on way to much, heck even some of my funiture I made my self. I guess I'm just like that. I get ideas and make stuff or change something. I just love it. I guess I got it from my dad, he's like that too. He has said a lot of of what you said before. Sometimes when I tell him about a part I'm looking for he just laughs and says good luck. He's told me about all the places he's ever dealt with but, most are gone or don't sell public anymore. I wish this wasn't this way. I can tell ya, when I have kids I'll get them intrested in this stuff. I think it has alot to do with the parents too. My brothers are a lot like me so it runs in the family.