Analogue electronics books recommendations

[kalee20]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bulgaria

Van Valkenburgh, Nooger & Neville's "Basic Electronics" books designed for basic training for either the Royal or US Navy are excellent.

Absolutely! Resoundedly seconded!

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bulgaria

Van Valkenburgh, Nooger & Neville's "Basic Electronics" books designed for basic training for either the Royal or US Navy are excellent.

Indeed: those books taught me a lot of the basics when I was in my early teens.
Also provided a useful 'update' to my then only reference book, 'Practical Wireless Encyclopaedia'.
Al.

[G6Tanuki]

"Analog electronics" covers quite a time-period!

I still have my late Father's "Admiralty Handbooks" which date from pre-WWII and have good treatments of things like coupled coils.

I also have "The Services Textbook of Radio - Volume 5 - Electronics" [first published 1955, 2nd edition 1963] which goes as far as to mention that new upstart thing the Transistor!

Ham-radio books [RSGB, ARRL] are, as mentioned, worth a look too - even the current ones have a reasonable treatment of analog.

Alas, "RF Design" magazine is no longer published - in the 80s and 90s it was on my must-read list!

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

It's worth paying real money for. The authors put in real work in writing it, so I would no more steer someone to a free download than I would steer them to a site telling them how to get their telly back from a repairer without paying.

Paper copies are available second-hand.

For hobby use, any edition will be good.

As far as Kindle goes, I had a discouraging incident where paid for electronic books could not be transferred after a computer died, so I treat electronic ones as not necessarily long lived. Books on paper, music on LP and CD for me!

The Art of Electronics covers very little in the RF technology area, and this is stated. But RF electronics still needs power supplies, controllers low frequency stages and audio. It's not perfect, but it's a very, very good fit for what people need when they decide to move onwards from component swapping.

David

Hear hear. Although I did have a wonderfully cross-purpose discussion on a forum (not this one) where he was pointing me at a particularly good section of the book on JFETS and noise, and I was saying those page numbers were all about MOSFETS.

Well it turned out he had Ed3 and I had Ed2!

So of course I had to go and buy Ed3, and at the same time the additional book extension The X Chapters https://x.artofelectronics.net/ .

Craig

[Bazz4CQJ]

I suspect that this thread may now be "killing Chris with kindness".

It's always hard to know, based on the one or two posts, just where people are on their own learning curve, and hence the books that will really suit them.

Anyway, he has suggestions for books covering a "spectrum" of technical complexity to consider now.

B

[jamesperrett]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Win Hill got steered my way when he was having trouble with some RF-ery and we had a pleasant conversation. I was left with the impression that he's definitely one of the good guys.

One of my first jobs was wiring and then troubleshooting a rugged cassette data logger that he designed. I remember thinking that it all looked a bit convoluted but it was actually very clever and worked well once my wiring mistakes had been sorted out.

The replay unit was one of the most solidly built cassette machines I've ever encountered.

As far as the original query is concerned - for audio circuits it might be worth looking out for a copy of John Linsley-Hood's "Valve and Transistor Audio Amplifiers" which seems to start with the basics and move on to practical designs. However it isn't cheap if you buy it new.

[Radio Wrangler]

Dunno about Linsley-Hood. He had some peculiar ideas and either hadn't got the maths to understand the counter arguments or was not open to such thoughts. His little class-A amplifier was basic but OK in general, though he did go a bit off on other things.

Doug Self might be a better source of audio stuff. Much more competent and on top of the job. A mooch round Keith Snook's site might help, too.

David

[fetteler]

I would like to say that I had no idea that the AOE download I mentioned was not legitimate.

Steve.

[Radio Wrangler]

There was nothing there to say that it was illegitimate, of course, and search engines keep finding it wherever it crops up. If publishers go after them it becomes an endless game of Whack-a-Mole.

David

[Nuvistor]

May as well mention the 4 G N Patchett books on Radio Servicing, written for the syllabus of the C&G exams. They are not heavy going but have lots of information, may not be not what Chris is after but for anyone wanting to dip their toes into Radio repair they are very good.
He did a series on TV Servicing as well.

[ms660]

Originally Posted by Nuvistor

May as well mention the 4 G N Patchett books on Radio Servicing, written for the syllabus of the C&G exams. They are not heavy going but have lots of information, may not be not what Chris is after but for anyone wanting to dip their toes into Radio repair they are very good.
He did a series on TV Servicing as well.

Lawrence.

[ChrisThomas]

Many thanks for all the extra suggestions and comments. There's never such a thing as one size fits all, so I'm prepared to search out several books. I love to see the older books covering 'make your own...' - when you couldn't just get a part off the internet. On the other hand!! I'm definitely most interested in audio, but radio is a close second. My grandparents had a lovely old tube radio that sounded and looked great, but I'm way off sorting something like that. I'm slowly getting my way round the innards of my Bush VHF102, and quite a lot of it is making sense! Thanks again...

[Boulevardier]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

There was nothing there to say that it was illegitimate, of course, and search engines keep finding it wherever it crops up. If publishers go after them it becomes an endless game of Whack-a-Mole.

David

It also seems to be a very professionally produced pdf - excellent screen presentation, contents list directly linked to text, etc. Nothing to arouse any suspicions of a hacked/amateur-scanned document.

Mike

[Uncle Bulgaria]

Originally Posted by Bazz4CQJ

I suspect that this thread may now be "killing Chris with kindness".

It's always hard to know, based on the one or two posts, just where people are on their own learning curve, and hence the books that will really suit them.

Anyway, he has suggestions for books covering a "spectrum" of technical complexity to consider now.

B

Quite so - I've found "The Art of Electronics" to be mostly whizzing over my head when I've consulted it, though I've appreciated the writing style. Sometimes I just need a cartoon to remind me of Ohm's Law!

[Uncle Bulgaria]

Originally Posted by Boulevardier

It also seems to be a very professionally produced pdf - excellent screen presentation, contents list directly linked to text, etc. Nothing to arouse any suspicions of a hacked/amateur-scanned document.

Mike

It's probably just like any pirated software - the genuine article offered for free by someone with the original. One should always look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to very pricey textbooks being offered free, gratis and for nothing. If you must indulge, at least use Sandboxie or similar to mitigate malware possibilities.

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bulgaria

I've found "The Art of Electronics" to be mostly whizzing over my head when I've consulted it, though I've appreciated the writing style. Sometimes I just need a cartoon to remind me of Ohm's Law!

That's good! There isn't much point buying a book all about stuff you're already comfortable with. It should stretch you somewhat.

It's very well written with a light tone and in some places a definite sense of humour.

The Art of Electronics was an honest to goodness game changer. Electronics courses threw standard mathematical analyses of circuits at you and you had to build your own understanding of a circuit and what its use was. H&H flipped it around and gave you the understanding first, along with just enough maths for you to be able to stick one together. On the average electronics course by the time they'd done the analyses, it was time to switch to a different circuit in order to get through the curriculum before exam time came round. It was more important to meet the timetable than it was to not leave the students behind. Most of those who can really do electronics taught themselves and succeeded despite the education industry.

It has comparative tables of the parameters of opamps nd transistors and voltage regs which span across multiple manufacturers. This sort of data doesn't occur anywhere else and it tells you which are the industry standard parts and which are the special jobs and what makes them special.

As I said, the book and the authors have earned the money, and it's something that you should read in layers. Keep going back to the beginning of a chapter or the whole book, and each time you'll pick up things you missed and it will build up in your head and click into place.

It's all transistor and IC, but the principles and viewpoints can be applied to all sorts of things.

For the RF side of things, how about a 1950s vintage ARRL handbook - I got loaned one for a while at a young age before I'd ever heard of photocopiers, I read it avidly and took notes. The rest I tried to memorise. The RSGB handbook is also good.

If there were amateur radio rallies running you can pick these things up for pocket money. At the end of the day, they'll ask you to please take them away!

Tranent? I've been regularly round to Lasswade (for horsey reasons) and I could have loaned you a variety of books to have a look at to see what worked for you. Everything from Fred Terman's books, the Admiralty Wireless handbooks, RSGB, ARRL, Wes Hayward's intro to RF design, AoE. But that's on hold until travel advisories relax.

David

[Bazz4CQJ]

Wasn't there a WWII Admiralty Radio handbook written by Lord Mountbatten, or maybe he just wrote the forward? I recall having a copy in my earliest days in radio and finding it very good (~1967). It got binned by my sister .

B

[Chris55000]

Hi!

If you're wanting the valve era, written in a simple to understand language and dealing progressively from "An Introduction to Sound" to "Fault Finding at the end", that falls nicely in the period covered by this Forum, can I recommend the 4 Volume 1963 Edition set of "Radio & Television" by C.A. Qurrington in the red covers?

These are a bit harder to find compared with earlier editions in the dark blue covers, but we'll worth the investment of you find them!

Chris Williams

[Skywave]

Chris: as we know, it's almost impossible to get to really understand how a circuit works without even basic maths & formulas. But sometimes a simple mnemonic or acronym helps: here's one for Ohm's Law . . .

Draw an equilateral triangle. Inside that triangle, write the three letters V, I and R. Position the V at the triangle's apex; the I in the lower left-hand corner and the R in the lower right-hand corner. Then, when you look at that drawing, your have V at the top and I and R beneath - so you get V = I x R. You also get I = V ÷ R and R = V ÷ I.

A useful acronym. When we have coils and capacitors in a series a.c. circuit, sometimes we need to recall if the current lags or leads the voltage. The acronym 'CIVIL' comes to the rescue. Read 'CIVIL' from left to right: first three letters are 'CIV' - read as 'for C (capacitance), I (current) leads V (voltage)', since as you read that, you meet the I before the V. Similarly, last three letters are 'VIL' - read as 'V (voltage) leads I (current) in L (inductance).

I know that there are other similar 'aides-de-memoir', but none spring to mind as I write this. Perhaps others here can suggest a few.

Al.

[Skywave]

Chris - in your OP, you mentioned your need for a sound understanding of basic principles with audio in mind. 'Audio' (and 'radio') - which are essentially analogue concepts - all rely on three fundamental electrical ideas: resistance, capacitance and inductance. I suggest you find a text book that covers these three concepts and how combinations of them behave. That will almost certainly involve some mathematics, but if the text in that book deals with just the essentials, the maths shouldn't be that hard to grasp. Having said all that, to understand & analyse how anything really works in analogue electronics, you just cannot avoid the maths. The degree of one's mathematical ability determines just how deep you can to 'dig in' to a given circuit. For many of us, that is not as deep (and as frightening) as it sounds! Every member here started where you are now: enthusiasm, patience, study, 'hands-on' practice and plenty of time will eventually bring the rewards you are seeking.
Best of luck in all your endeavours.

Al.