Who needs sockets?

giovanni

Well-known member
Hey guys! I made a spreadsheet (open to anyone to view) with some Mouser and Tayda links and price comparisons for plain old single row SIP sockets. I try to buy these with every order because they are pretty handy to socket transistors or other component. Navigating Mouser is sometimes hard so I hope this is useful. Surprisingly, Tayda's price is 8X cheaper than the cheapest Mouser one that I could find. Maybe the quality is not as good?
 
Tayda SIP sockets (and their sockets in general) are completely fine. Though, other sources carry products with different metal compositions/plating and heights (e.g., raised, low-profile) that may be necessary for certain projects.
 
There is a difference, but not that big. Same with the machined DIP sockets. I’ve been quite happy with the Tayda sockets. One of the few parts that I’ve noticed a big difference in are the LED fresnel holders—the ones Mouser sells do a better job in terms of looking cleaner.
 
Are you referring to the VCC ones? If so, the VCC is my preferred choice by far.
Yes—I had to find a baggie to check; I’ve been using my old supply of them, and ordered some of the Tayda when I noticed I was getting low. The baggie was still handwritten! I think I have examples of the past 35 years of Mouser packaging… I can’t really complain about the Tayda quality, given the price; but with the visual impact, I think it’s money we’ll spent.
 
I'm actually in need of a low pro dip-8 socket but not enough to make a mouser order with $8 shipping
$8 shipping is amazing. It's 20 Euros in Europe for orders below 200 Euros last I checked, free shipping above that.

I find myself trusting sockets less and less for transistors unless it's those (expensive) round ones. Those seem pretty sturdy.
 
Last edited:
All perspectives welcome! I use them out of abundance of caution but I never actually had the need to pull anything out yet (last famous words).
I did the same thing for a while, I completely advocate sockets for ICs but the only reason I would ever use them again for transistors would be for situations like a matched quad in an phase 90, I get that one but other than that, I have rolled enough transistors to realize that it just doesn’t make a big enough difference (at least for me) in confirmed substitutions to warrant the problems you can have with conductivity. Just do the homework find the part or sub and commit, if still unsure about a part and not confident in your desoldering game set the part slightly higher to be clipped and still have serviceable leads. It looks cleaner and really cuts down on contact failures. Get rid of them flux dumpsters if you don’t truly need them… they have caused me more problems than they ever solved. just my two cents.
 
I’m also in the socket ICs only camp, I never use germanium and I have tons of the general purpose transistors if I ever need one. My two builds with the most problems ever both have socketed transistors and after I soldered them to the sockets they have been much more reliable.
 
Back
Top