asulger said:I'm pretty sure that market forces set prices and have hardly anything to do with cost of manufacture.
See any mature software product where the cost is nill.
Note airplane trips (airlines lose money to keep market share).
Patent drugs (R&D is sometimes paid from NIH grants, not the drug companies, yet they are still expensive while they are exclusive).
wheelema said:You are SO lucky (at least from where I sit) to be in Ireland. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side.
wheelema said:But even if you pay twenty to one for the good stuff, you're still looking at under a buck for the vast majority of components. I don't think it adds up fast enough to justify several thousand dollars for a mic.
Now that WOULD be cool!paddyponchero said:They should do a Dell so you could go to the site and configure your own mic
wheelema said:I don't think it adds up fast enough to justify several thousand dollars for a mic.
Tubes & transformers so simple, so elegant just like the olden daysHan said:FWIW, this is the inside of the MXL V77, one of the best Chinese mics:
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/altaykdogru/DSC01031a.jpg
Han said:
wheelema said:Diversity is more important than price point. More power to you if you can afford that Geffell... wish I could... but better to have two dozen different mics that cost you three thousand all together than to have one mic that cost three thousand all by itself.
Han said:I wonder, why is a hand built Aston Martin DB9 so expensive?
dgatwood said:Regarding the discussion of surface mount versus through-the-hole, I would just appreciate it if companies would stop mounting devices through metal vias.
There's nothing more annoying than having the solder stick to the inside of the hole as you're pulling a part through and having to have one person pulling on the blown capacitor while a second person holds the board and heats it. (It's scary heating a board instead of a lead...)
Not saying surface mount is all that much better, but please, if you're designing electornics, remember this rule: vias should either have metal tubes or leads running through them, but never both....
paddyponchero said:PTH can be a real pain, large components can sink a lot of heat inceasing the possibiliy of pulling the palting. If the leads are accessibleit helps to cut them to prevent heat sinking and pull the leads individually with a tweezers or pliers.
paddyponchero said:A lot of the pth boards I've worked with had enormous ground planes often several ground planes in different layers, the oly solution was a weller heat gun or a solder pot.
dgatwood said:Well, in this case, the capacitor fell apart in the pliers, so we ended up pulling the leads out individually anyway.... This was a power filtering cap... something on the order of 5-10 uF, I forget exactly. But yeah, it was exceptionally hard for the first few minutes trying to keep both leads hot.
Yup. That pretty much describes this board. Basically the via had to be heated for the leads to fit at all, including reinserting the leads the first time. (After putting one in backwards and smoking it, the second replacement was slightly easier, strangely enough.)
Happily, that hardware has been in use for a couple of years since then with no problems, but if I had any idea how many hours it was going to take to replace a simple capacitor on that thing, I'd have probably thrown up my hands and bought a new one. I replaced the power connector on a PowerBook faster than that. Several -hours- faster.... *sigh*
And likewise, don't buy the most expensive. Determining that point of diminishing returns, if there is one, is the crux, and will get the best "bang for the buck." Whether that's what suits your needs, though, is another matter. Sometimes the cheapest thing is perfectly adequate, and sometimes even the most expensive still isn't good enough.jhughs said:... until you reach the point of diminishing returns. So, if you're on a budget, don't buy the cheapest thing...