[CrawlingEye]

I went into Walden books today and was looking for a good reference book, but as I didn't notice, it was 8:59 when I sat there to leaf through the only book on constructing electronics.

I didn't know the quality of it, but it seemed kind of bland and perhaps not the best book to use. Do any of you know any books that will act as a good reference tool to help me build my first amp?

I'm willing to bet the CMoy could likely be built like a model, from how simple it seems to be, providing I made good soldering contacts, but I'd like to build some more advanced amps eventually, so I'd rather really understand things as I'm doing them than be just putting a model together.

Thanks all.

 

[tangent]

Depends what you want to get out of it. If you just want a little book with common schematic symbols and formulas and such, the one I'd suggest is out of print now. If you want a book to teach you electronics so you can interpret schematics and make your own circuits, go with _The Art of Electronics_ by Horowitz and Hill or _Practical Electronics for Inventors_ by Scherz. The latter is easier to understand, but the former will take you farther. Both are accessible to raw newbies.

 

[CrawlingEye]

Thanks, tangent. I think I'll go with Practical Electronics For Inventors, if it's the easier of the two but still will allow me to gain a basic understanding of schematics and allow me to understand what's being done while building my first amp, it'll certainly do what I'd like.

I'm certainly not ruling out later purchasing a second more advanced book, if there are any others offered. If not, the other you mentioned "The Art Of Electronics" may not be so far out-of-line.

It seems I can find Practical Electronics for $40 through barnes and nobles, not too bad, I wonder if Walden Books can get it (I have a gift card.

)

Edit: Indeed! Walden's site has it listed at $27.99, now I just need to see if I can get that price (and book) at the actual store. If not, I guess I'll be doing a 'special order.'

 

[tkerby]

I've never seen the book "Practical Electronics For Inventors" but I can comment on "The Art of Electronics". I started out in electronics at the age of 7 with a 300 in 1 kit but got very fed up that I could only follow the instructions and couldn't design my own things or modify those that were there. It did give me a grounding in reading schematics though as the harder projects in the kit did not give construction information. If I remember correctly, everything was built with wires between springs on a board.

I then bought a few Tandy / Radioshack books by Forest Mimms who is a great author for clear explanaitions of how components work and basic circuit advice. I seem to remember the first manual was "Getting Started in Electronics" which I lent to a teacher and never saw again. I'm not sure if it is still available.

"The Art of Electronics" has been with me since age 12, and while I read it cover to cover then, I only understood around half of the content as it does require a good grounding in high school maths (integration, differentiation, a little fourier series, algebra). I have to say it was still a very useful book and I have used it throughout my time at University and in employment as an electronics engineer.

Another good book, although it is out of print at the moment is "Analogue Circuit Design: a First Course" by H Martin Reekie who was one of my favourite lecturers. It covers a lot of transistor and opamp theory in simple terms and is intended as a 1st / 2nd year university text. Martin also includes a considerable number of rules of thumb that saves on pages of maths in many situations. I know a number of hobbyists who use this book

Below here are university level analogue design books...........

If you want to advance further, you may want to consider D.A. Neamen; "Electronic Circuit Analysis & Design" as a good grounding in the circuit analysis performed to optimise analogue circuits. D.I. Crecraft, D.A. Gorham, J.J. Sparkes; "Electronics" also covers some of this material in a more general level.

Finally (and hoping not to scare you), if you are really keen, SPICE analysis can be handy to simulate circuits for you. Its available in a number of forms as both free and commercial software. Berkeley Spice and PSpice are what to look for. This should probably only be considered if you are very keen to design your own amplifier topologies or see the effects of making component changes. It can be particularly useful for looking at the frequency response of circuits. A. Vladimirescu; "The SPICE Book" and P.E. Allen, D.R. Holberg; "CMOS Analog Circuit Design" may be useful as a manual and reference. The other possibility for more graphical (and easy to use simulation) is software such as "Electronics Workbench". It's drag and drop components and runs a similar engine to spice behind it.

 

[tangent]

Quote:

I'm not sure if it is still available.

Radio Shack stopped carrying the Mims books in the past year. The book I hinted at previously was one of them: they published the four "engineer's notebook" booklets as a single book there near the end, and it makes a really nice basic quick reference. Too bad it's hard to find now.

Quote:

Reekie...Neamen...Crecraft

None of these appear to be in general distribution here in the US. I hope someone can suggest similar titles available from Amazon.