Building in the EU

[szukalski]

With various taxes and parts generally coming from outside the EU, I thought it'd be useful to share our experiences..

My experience with buying from Germany is:

• Getting anything from the US is painful from shipping costs. PCBs are tolerable if you buy enough to average out the shipping/tax costs.
• You buy a prepared kit from Musikding. It will get you what you want but there are limited options, parts may not be what you would pick. Musikding does miss things now and then, they have good customer service (in my experience) and have always come through when they've missed something.
• You have a small number of builds and have to go to a variety of retailers (Musikding, Banzai, UK-Electronic, Retroamplis) for everything you're after. Shipping costs will add up and hurt. Musikding is best for 125B enclosures but stock/choice is usually limited, UK-Electronic is good for 1590B, Retroamplis is good but has high shipping costs.
• You invest up front and stock up for a larger (6+) number of builds and buy from Mouser for components, and Tayda for enclosures/pots. I get my footswitches, sockets, knobs from AliExpress (Daier is decent but has minimum order numbers). In general you either have to order enough to get free shipping (Mouser) or for the cost of shipping to be averaged down enough to be economically feasible (Tayda). I prefer this way though. You need to invest more, but get the components that you want, the enclosures you want, and have the most choice. For ICs and non-stocked transistors, then it's off to one of the usual ((Musikding, Banzai, UK-Electronic, Retroamplis) and hurting for shipping. Retroamplis has the best range, but highest shipping, so again, buying in bulk is the way to go. Banzai have a "weird" inventory and you can't rely on their shipping estimates.
  • Mouser has DDP for large enough orders, and Tayda do DDP on DHL up to a certain weight. I have read that you can register with DHL and they will bill you the customs directly, which could be an even cheaper delivery option.
  • With a large order recently, I was able to get pots at €0.50 each, and coloured 125Bs at €8 each.

Who else has experiences to share?

 

[Feral Feline]

You may be interested in these threads, too:

https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/when-your-hobbie-is-to-assemble-pedals-but-you-live-in-europe.7759/

Question for EU/UK members

Has anyone here from EU or UK received a PedalPCB order that was placed on (or after) July 1st? I'm curious to know how the VAT fees are being handled by the destination country.

forum.pedalpcb.com

 

[jesuscrisp]

I usually buy parts from Musikding, Banzai and Tweakableparts. All have their pros and cons and sadly there's the limitation that neither usually has everything I need in stock. I do actually buy kits from Musikding if all I want is a clone "for research purposes", or I just replace some of the parts where I want something else. The choice of box caps and resistors they provide with the kits is absolutely fine IMHO.

In terms of availability of builds: I know we're on the PPCB forums, but for the most part other PCB people like in the EU specifically PCB Guitar Mania or Moonn Electronics make perfectly fine PCBs too and have a huge number of builds available. Personally I'm more of a vero builder the most time but for just cloning PCBs are quick and easy.

Maybe you want to consider buying the most common cap and resistor values, ICs, pots, jacks, enclosures etc in bulk and then only order the odd ones when needed.

At one point I have ordered a larger quanitity of enclosures off aliexpress, but these days it's probably not worth it anymore. I also bought big bags of resistors and caps off Amazon but ended up with way too many values I don't really use. Also I mostly use Wima or generic box caps instead of the greenies I bought and many other caps I have lying around are only used for the occasional tagboard or vero build when they fit.

Also consider for the shipping prices etc. that are adding up, you most likely are still paying way less than actually buying those pedals. What your time is worth you have to decide for yourself, but if you think paying an extra 10-20€ in shipping hurts, just do the math what the same original pedals would cost you. If you feel it's not worth it, go buy the originals, at least they have resale value.

 

[szukalski]

Great hints @jesuscrisp ! Exactly why I started this thread, I didn't know about Tweakableparts or Moonn!

Your suggestion is the one I've taken, stocked up on the common parts, just needs an investment up-front.
I'm not disputing the cost of DIY, it allows you to savour many more flavours of pedal compared to buying originals, but cost optimisation is always appreciated!

 

[andare]

I've bought a lot of parts from amptone.pl since it's in my country. Their site is also in English so they might ship outside Poland too.
They have some glaring omissions, like no 1N5817s and a small selection of transistors. And they're out of 125Bs.

I've also bought parts from Tube-Town in Germany. DHL is steep at 14 euros but their service was very quick.

Musikding is awesome but you never know when you'll receive your order. They'll always fix any mistakes quickly. Would buy again from them.

I agree that we're saving a ton by going DIY. I might as well suck it up and order all my next 10 enclosures from Tayda with printing and drilling. The drill templates are just too convenient.