TOPIC: THE DISPOSABLE CULTURE

[jingle_jangle]

Our guys won't pick up PS foam, which most Asian consumer goods still are packed in. Your guys don't have a contract for LDPE, is my guess.

The last SONY product I bought (VAIO Laptop) came packaged in 100% recycled molded toilet paperboard (like Starbuck's cup carriers), and it was a pleasure to see somebody ahead of the curve on this, without being legislated into doing it.

[windchimp]

Paul...

I agree that reworking (or initial soldering) lead free connections can be done with the proper care in some cases, however be very careful with any surface mount components...tricky little buggers! While through-hole connections would seem to be a no-brainer, the board itself will be damaged very quickly if excess heat is applied (inner-layer separation at the PTH). Surface mount pads are also problematic as they tend to "lift" off the board. Fortunately for most of the guitar related connections it's only a lead connected to a terminal or wire which makes things so much easier as you correctly point out. The IPC (Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits) and others have made some consultants wealthy publishing new specs addressing the lead-free fiasco. Many if not all of the world's manufacturing base is still struggling with the conversion to lead-free technology, not to mention the HUGE costs associated with it. And just for grins and giggles - since working with the lead-free materials require higher temperatures, it consumes more energy than traditional eutectic solders...how's that for "green" legislation!

Lucky for us in musicland that if anything goes south due to a faulty lead-free connection the only thing to suffer is our temper (or ego!). In my other life we worry about an engine control system, ILS or the like going south at 38,000 feet...kind of hard to pull in to the next truck stop!

Don't get me started on the recycling...

BTW, sorry if I stirred up the brain cells with this drivel...I know it makes my brain hurt.

[johnallg]

Paul, they are supposed to pick up #1 through #7 plastics. I believe it is a size issue.

[jingle_jangle]

They won't touch PS...even if I break it up. Same with PS foam "peanuts".

[johnallg]

Same here about the PS - and we got the new city recycler flier today and I see it is only #1 through #5.

Interesting aside on the PS peanuts. Way back when, working in a factory, we had a sprayer who used to take and melt the peanuts in acetone, load that in his sprayer, then spray several light coats of it over nudie magazine pictures. The pictures/ink would then peal off the paper and he'd have decals.

[jingle_jangle]

Thanks for the tip, chief...I'll get right on it.

[johnallg]

A new twist for all the open landscape on the top of the acoustics?

[BobKat]

Admission- I vacuum out my car BEFORE I take it to the shop for work. I want them to know that they are working on a car that belongs to someone who really cares about what they own and expects that the shop will be careful and leave it in the very same condition it was in when I dropped it off. I attempt to reinforce that by making sure the car is spotless. Same with my guitar gear.

A large part of the reason that i have learned to work on guitars, cars, etc... is because I can't stomach other people touching them. My first car came back from a window resealing with a major ding in the fresh paint, and my acoustic came back froma refret with fresh scratches once. That stuff makes me bonkers.

I see what he means completely. I am very cheap, and I absolutely HATE buying things twice. I also hate waste. So I am very careful with my things. It's just good common sense. I blew up a yard trimmer last year due to stupidity (I incorrectly mized the 2-cycle fuel in haste, and seized it) and I was mad at myself for a month.

My kid goes through MP3 players like they are made of chocolate (I am not paying for them, I bought the first one) and I have had the same one for 4 years. It looks mint. My brother is also really hard on his stuff. It just makes me nuts when I see 2-month old cell phones and digital cameras and claptops with the keys missing and huge scrapes, food residue, etc...aghhhhh!

Rant over

[jingle_jangle]

I'll join you in that rant, Bob. Back when I had my own fabricating business ,my brother, between jobs, worked for me for six months. I moved him from Colorado and put him up in a suite of rooms in the huge house I then owned. The first night he was with us, he borrowed my new motorcycle to visit friends and promptly laid it down on his way home from the bar...it went downhill from there, but we struggled along because I had a belief that he would see the light. After he moved his girlfriend into the rooms I had given him, messed up a good deal of my machinery and left a general mess in my shop and my life, I finally had to let him go.

Although I'm not really too controlling about things, I work hard for what I do have and can't abide the thought of others neglecting or abusing my things, as it's an indirect show of lack of respect for me and my work and time. I sort of apply the first part of the Hippocratic Oath to my life and career:

"First, do no harm". This means that when something leaves my shop, or a person leaves my employ or acquaintance, my aim is that they do so having gained in total, not lost--anything.

Expecting the same from others is often asking too much (the concept of reciprocity is too complex and too much of a commitment to some) but I persist nonetheless.

[johnallg]

Looking back on my disposable post, I have to relate my Tuesday morning caper. When I got home Monday night after posting, there was a note the microwave door wouldn't open. Tuesday I looked into it, and there was no action on the push bar. Being the cheapskate, I opened up the covers and found a little plastic intermediary part that had a pivot pin broken off. It being hard plastic and me not having the "melt the plastic" kind of repair glue, I opted to try Monkey Grip, complete with wetting one part with a bead. No soap, would not set up or bite. Long story short, I found some old J-B Weld in the basement and used that. I let it set up until Wednesday noon and it was HARD. I now have a working microwave door. I wonder how many would just go out and buy new? Oh, and this one is old enough no parts would be available.

[alanz]

I an am engineer for a well-known major high tech company. You might even be holding one of my company's items in your hand right now. I don't work for that division, I work for the division that does digital video uplink, downlink, distribution and consumer equipment division.

We spec our products for a 7 useful year life (which is not a 7 year design life, our stuff can last much longer than that). That's a long time, because in 7 years pretty much none of the components we use will be available, at least not the major stuff like memory and processors. We are constantly getting End of Life announcements from device manufacturers (a "last call for orders"). There is no point at all in designing something for a 15 or 20 year life because it will be unsupportable anyway. Add to that the constant march forward of technical standards and a desire by our customers (not the consumer, but the service providers) to have a tech edge and you get this situation.

However, we design very carefully; thermal effects are a huge driver for our designs. Electromagnetic interference is another. Ever higher clock speeds on boards requires we layout the traces very carefully. Our customers are getting more and more green conscious - we are expected to meet WEE and RoHS and use as much recycled content as possible. Some customers are going above and beyond the regulations as a marketing strategy. The next big thing on our list is to be essentially 0 power consuming on deep stand-by (there is no true "off" mode unless you unplug it from the wall). You can't do this stuff with the good old fashioned "tubes (valve) in a furniture cabinet" design.

Also, the guy quoted in that first post thinks that everyone should be a gear fetishist. Does he seriously think that everyone is going to unscrew the case of their 7.1 A/V amp every 6 months (and void the warranty) and use the can of compressed air everyone has laying around to blow out some dust? I think he seriously does but the world has a different answer: "No. No we will not." Where did I put my anti-static wrist-strap and workbench mat? I had one around here somewhere...

[paologregorio]

Looking back on my disposable post, I have to relate my Tuesday morning caper. When I got home Monday night after posting, there was a note the microwave door wouldn't open. Tuesday I looked into it, and there was no action on the push bar. Being the cheapskate, I opened up the covers and found a little plastic intermediary part that had a pivot pin broken off. It being hard plastic and me not having the "melt the plastic" kind of repair glue, I opted to try Monkey Grip, complete with wetting one part with a bead. No soap, would not set up or bite. Long story short, I found some old J-B Weld in the basement and used that. I let it set up until Wednesday noon and it was HARD. I now have a working microwave door. I wonder how many would just go out and buy new? Oh, and this one is old enough no parts would be available.

I love JB Weld. I'd probably do the same thing. I've done a lot of similar things with JB Weld. It works wonders.

[jingle_jangle]

Also, the guy quoted in that first post thinks that everyone should be a gear fetishist. Does he seriously think that everyone is going to unscrew the case of their 7.1 A/V amp every 6 months (and void the warranty) and use the can of compressed air everyone has laying around to blow out some dust? I think he seriously does but the world has a different answer: "No. No we will not." Where did I put my anti-static wrist-strap and workbench mat? I had one around here somewhere...

I have a different take on this point, although I can't disagree with you on your other items in your post. It does represent a narrow "insiders" view of one type of industry and its current practices, as seen by someone immersed in the culture of a single corporation. No offense, of course.

In the past, things were proudly designed to give a consumer value for money, and that included electronics. In fact, I'd venture to say, "especially electronics". Cynicism seems to have crept into engineering sometime right after the Second World War (perhaps because of WWII?). The first manufacturing industry it hit was automaking (ref: Vance Packard, "planned obsolescence" was a term he coined), but by the late '60s, it had become endemic. We lost our efficiency and went for the bottom line, assisted by a new generation of Harvard Business School grads in management positions (Robert McNamara, the "Whiz Kids") at the same time. A second generation of same (early '90s) completed a transformation to a consumer society that generally discards quality and the notion of it as anti-progessive and the stuff of fetishists. (Not necessarily you, Alan, just a general statement).

Were we still emphasizing quality over replaceability, no doubt our economy (and those of our Asian business partners and others who changed their songs to follow the US example) would have not experienced the immense growth we've seen over the past 40 years.

Is that a bad thing, I wonder, in hindsight?

[alanz]

We wouldn't have a JangleBox otherwise.

And let's face it - we all want our JangleBoxes.

[rickenbrother]

Interesting reading, Paul. It drives me nuts when I see people that don't take care of good equipment, no matter what it might be. The things I've seen people do guitars, cars, motorcycles, amplifiers and other items just makes me nuts.
Several times I have bought a guitar on ebay that was so caked with crud from sweat and dust and who knows what else, that I find it hard to believe that someone wouldn't be embarrassed to send something to somebody in such nasty condition.

You have to get the hot dog cooker to go with your hard boiled egg extractor!!