Fatboy Slim may have overstated the situation. For instance, it’s hard to imagine either of my parents having much use for a TB-303 despite their above-average interest in music. I’m not even sure that I need one, having never used the real thing. However, shortly after finding out that a couple of new sources for x0xb0x kits I happened to listen to a few 303-heavy tracks by The Crystal Method and decided that I might as well grab a kit while they’re available. I mean, eventually the world is going to run out of those discontinued transistors, right? It seemed like a reasonable rationalization anyway.
So I ordered a kit from x0xSh0p.de. I corresponded with a fellow named Christian who was very polite and answered my queries promptly. It took it a couple of weeks to make its way across the Pacific, as expected, but it arrived in fine shape thanks to its good packaging. It’s a well-done kit; the parts are organized in many small, neatly labeled bags and there’s a hand-checked and signed BOM verifying that everything is present. (I checked again anyway and found no errors.)
So far I’ve finished the power supply and most of the VCO. The square wave output of the VCO doesn’t match the output described in the x0xb0x build manual, but I’m pretty sure that the problem is because of an error in the manual described here. (Short version: put in R36 before doing the test.) I haven’t verified this yet, though; I found the description of the error after packing up my soldering iron and stuff.
