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Where To Get Sets and Parts For discussions about swapmeets, rallies, NVCF and BVWS, car boot sales, antique and charity shops, dealers, newspaper adverts, the local tip and just about any other source of equipment (other than eBay).

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Old 25th Jun 2020, 11:29 am   #681
raditechman
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

When they first opened shops they were good, I would visit the Hammersmith store often to get components. (There was a Tandy a few shops along too).
When they expanded and started to open shops everywhere I found them far less usefu.l

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Old 25th Jun 2020, 11:42 am   #682
chriswood1900
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

it seems from the responses they are missed in varying degrees. With regard to their demise they really missed the boat. Just as the boon in home construction project with the Pi and Arduino was taking off they concentrated on radio control models and gimmicks. Near the end I was in discussion with one of the sharper guys in the local store at Cribbs Causeway about this and when he wanted to learn about Pi and the peripherals there was no training material and if they wanted to use something in their own time they were only permitted to borrow one item at a time which clearly couldn't work and handicapped their ability to inform customers.
It was interesting to read the stories about Radio Shack in the US and how similar their declines were.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 11:43 am   #683
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I miss Tandy more than Maplin. It's partly a geographical thing- during lunchtimes in the late 20th century in Chelmsford high street, there was very little else of interest.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 11:54 am   #684
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Come to think of it, one thing that both Tandy and Maplin had in common was that there seemed to be a policy of half-price offers on their mainstream test-gear, notably multimeters, that steadily cycled through the range over 12-18 months or so. Quite often, there'd be something where you thought, that looks useful but just a tad more than I'd want to pay for a light-duty consumer item, I'll wait a wee while. In a way, CPC fills that particular slot!
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 11:58 am   #685
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malcolm G6ANZ View Post
I found Maplin useful to get hardware such as boxes and connectors, DIN phono etc. They weren't cheap but local and quick. I never bothered trying to get components from them, I once asked for 6 x 0.1uF caps only to be told that they only keep 2 in stock at any one time. The same for resistors.
I now use the internet for components be it eBay, amazon or one of the major suppliers.
On the last but one day of Maplins existance i wandered in and they were bagging up sacks of connectors,audio plugs leads , battery holders etc etc and selling the sacks for £6 each.
I bought 3 sacks.
On getting them home i added up the retail value of Maplins prices which were marked on the products mostly and they came to over £450 !
Now im stuck with audio stuff i will never use so.

I do miss Maplins and i did used to use them on occasion. just like when the Tandy Shops closed down sadly.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:03 pm   #686
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I don't miss Maplins as the shop was in town and parking anywhere near was expensive.
I do miss our local parts supplier H.E Donnor though! He had been in business for decades and stocked everything! He had a wall of component drawers 10 foot high by 20 foot wide.you could take a bag and help yourself, how about 10 Mullard 'mustards' for £2?
Some stock had been there years while fast moving stuff like mains outlet sockets aerials and household fans was replenished regularly.
He always had something in stock you never knew existed and didn't know you needed!
The prices of some of the older stuff was very cheap.
He finally closed a couple of years ago I should have gone and bought that wall!
Sadly missed !
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:15 pm   #687
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

As has been said, I miss the Maplin of 30 years ago when they were more than just a computer and disco light store.

I increasingly found towards the end that, whilst it was theoretically convenient to jump into the car to go and buy a component that I needed urgently, they were increasingly prone to not having the item in stock. This drove me towards the likes of CPC and RS and I discovered that they were cheaper and delivered quicker, so I switched to using them years before Maplin's demise.

In a similar vein, I also miss the Tandy of 30 years ago, too!
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:23 pm   #688
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I miss the browsing opportunity. Our local Maplin was just a 10 minute drive away in an out of town shopping area with good car parking. I often used to pop in to look over their racks of hardware items for the odd connector, cable or switch. For me it was never the place to buy resistors, capacitors etc.

I was sometimes to be found wandering between their displays mentally designing something, trying to work out for example whether a particular box was the right size for a given connector, switch, wiring and a few components. For me, actually being able to see and hold items helps the mental process. The results of some of those Maplin trips are still in my 'roundtuit' box, some even still in their Maplin bags. Is it really 2 years ago?

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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:29 pm   #689
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I miss the opportunity to browse things you could not view anywhere else and pick up the odd item usually consumables. I used to occasionally order individual capacitors for projects just a few pence at a time so I didn’t contribute much to their profit margin, in fact there were often several staff and no customers in the shop and when I handed over a £1 I’d joke that was worth staying open for!
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:38 pm   #690
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I miss walking around Maplins, looking at the stock for ideas but then going home and ordering it more cheaply from someone else online. Sometimes Maplins would get hold of things cheaply and I'd buy. Such as the ProsKit analogue multimeter. Sometimes I'd get a few discrete components if I had to have it that day.

What I miss most about Maplins is the late 70s and early 80s futuristic covers on their catalogues. The catalogues were fat like old phone directories. There were also projects in the catalogues, such as the synthesizers, guitar and organ. I could look through one of those catalogues for a whole day and not notice time passing.

Now I surf the Internet all day for ideas, order online and go nowhere. Self-isolation? Been doing it for years!
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:40 pm   #691
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Found this in the back of an old catalogue... think I've missed the boat to redeem it !

Andy
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 12:55 pm   #692
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Like many others here what I really miss is the Maplin of decades ago, whose then superb catalogue was stuffed with little application circuits for many of the ICs they sold, so that often I ended up buying an IC I hadn't originally felt I needed.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 1:00 pm   #693
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

[QUOTE=electronicskip;1263110]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malcolm G6ANZ View Post

On the last but one day of Maplins existance i wandered in and they were bagging up sacks of connectors,audio plugs leads , battery holders etc etc and selling the sacks for £6 each.
I bought 3 sacks.
On getting them home i added up the retail value of Maplins prices which were marked on the products mostly and they came to over £450 !
Now im stuck with audio stuff i will never use so.
Been there done that in the last few weeks I travelled between Bristol and Basingstoke for work and called in several stores and hoovered up the big bags of connectors on offer, problem is I'm still sorting them, a few have made it into projects ut a fear many may stay as stock!
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 1:16 pm   #694
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

I miss Maplin for the simplicity of getting a part today. Problem I found was that with most of the staff the part you wanted was ab33hh, (e.g.) a 2.2uF 16v cap. I lost count of the number of times I've been told "we don't have one in stock", till the manager got involved and found they had one (e.g.) but of 25 volts. It seemed that only managers had any technical qualifications . And even thn ,some were better than others. I remember finding components on line at our store that the in store inventory said they did not have. Manager check proved me right. I had a chat with our local manager after that to find that he had a stock room ful of stuff he had no codes for, so without codes he could not sell it.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 1:25 pm   #695
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Marlin used to be good 15 years ago, the slowly turned into a gadget shop. Same was with Tandy ( if I remember the name correctly ). The local shops were useful, esp on a weekend.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 1:51 pm   #696
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

It seems a lot of us on here were put off by the lack of technical knowledge of the staff, or with some I think it was sheer lack of interest, also some stock levels could be annoying. I remember travelling to Shropshire to a friends farm, on arrival he told me his electric gates were not working, why he hadn't mentioned this earlier I have no idea!
Anyhow it turned out that it was a small fuse that had failed, a 1.6A 5x20mm glass one, fairly common in stuff like alarms, we finally ended up in Shrewsbury Maplins, "oh we sold out of those, they're quite popular and we only carry 2 packs" said the guy behind the counter, 2 packs of 10, I ask you! He did however rather helpfully offer me a pack of 2A time delay fuses, and seemed rather put out when I declined them and asked if they had any standard ones in 1.5A, which fortunaetely they did.
Although they may not have stocked many fuses I did notice they had decent stocks of several very expensive items which if they were lucky they probably sold one a year. I mean how many people are going to get up in the morning and decide they must rush out and spend 4 or 5 hundred quid on a thermal imager, or a high end meter that day.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 2:38 pm   #697
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Default Re: Maplin stores

Hi all my component draws came from maplin inc. the components but have used the most common the draw units still have the stock codes on them, for me its like having my own Maplin, I miss chatting to the staff. Yes i miss Maplin
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 4:02 pm   #698
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Default Re: Are you missing Maplins?

Quote:
Originally Posted by chriswood1900 View Post
I believe today is the second anniversary of final demise of Maplins, I was wondering if people missed them, how they are managing now and who they now use as suppliers.
I only ever realy saw Maplin stores as a supplier-of-last-resort: somewhere you'd go to if you were *desperately* in need of something simple, like a BNC-to-N converter (someone having stolen the last one from your project-provisioning kit).

They never really seemed to hold enough stock to be a serious player: "You actually want to buy **both** our diodes?"

Farnell, CPC, RS do OK by me - with mext-day delivery. I can also suggest:

https://damsu.co.uk/

for an interesting range of CB/ham-radio gear and similarly

https://www.sinotel.co.uk/

They have some stuff on offer - for examplehttps://www.sinotel.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20&products _id=183 - which should make the Yaesu/Icom/Kenwood-guys worried.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 9:12 pm   #699
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Default Re: Maplin stores

I don't miss Maplin and I don't miss Tandy. Though I had some good things out of these shops - especially Tandy - still got stuff I bought in the 1970s. Maplin became a bit of a last resort place.

What I do miss is the components shop with chemist type drawers and old-fashioned counter staffed by middle-aged blokes puffing on pipes - but that is ancient history and only a fading memory for those of us of a certain age.

However, high street type emporiums have largely had their day and this current little hassle has probably moved their demise forward five years or more. The entire complex where the last Maplin I visited was located is now under threat. Old photographs of my local town show the centre full of houses, replaced by a mall in the 1960s (where the Tandy was for probably all of 10-15 years). When CV-19 has done its thing probably best bulldoze the mall and rebuild with houses.

Locally, against all the odds, we have retained an 'open all hours' hardware shop where you can buy nails by weight, oddments of timber where you can rummage to find the rough sawn piece that is just the right size you need and if you want 'something to replace one of these' or describe a problem he'll likely have just the thing to fix it - and you won't find it, or even know where to look in B & Q. Sadly, he's closing down as he's been running at a loss for years. It will turn back into the house it originally was. These sort of places aren't viable any more.
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Old 25th Jun 2020, 10:48 pm   #700
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Default Re: Maplin stores

There is an electronics shop in Stockport that used to have a load of drawers behind the counter & often me & my electronic minded friends would often go there.

It changed hands about 15 years ago & the new owners started to concentrate on ready made equipment and mobile phone accessories.
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