JAMECO RELIAPRO 2155541 COLORORGAN Circuit Skill Easy LED Color Organ Kit

I bought this kit just for the heck of it. I could have dropped half the components on the floor and still had plenty to build this. I took the easy route in dropped in all the resistors and diodes first, soldered them, then moved on to taller components, saving the input and power jacks for last. Taking out the amount of time I spent on things not related to building this kit, it took just a bit past 2 hours to build. My impressions of it are overall good. I solder everything with a chisel tip iron and had no difficulty. I'd like to see a different trimpot for the treble channel, as it had to pretty well be pegged to get good solid results, however the mid and bass channels do very well. The LEDs in the kit should be checked before assembly, though, as a couple of them in my kit were inverse polarity. Outside of that, I strayed a bit, adding in a JST connector across the power jack, and am considering changing the output to a single LED per channel, and a connector to drive RGB LED tape. Took one star off for the LED polarity issue (again, this may have just been in the kit I recieved) and for the treble trimpot needing a slightly different value so it's not pegged at one stop. If I could get just the board and chips, I would gladly build a second one from the extra components!

I agree with, Herbsworld, regarding parts labeling. JAMECO was negligent with this. On the other hand, there was generally enough parts to make two completed circuits, except for the two IC's. Most of the solder pads are a bit too thin, not much room to get a soldering iron in there to heat them. Overall, the project was very easy and the finished product works as described. I plan to buy a second kit for a stereo assembly and rewire smaller, 3mm, LED's into goggles for an eyes-closed audio light show.Also: bought the first kit for $20 here and now they are selling them for $49+, so I will but the kit elsewhere.

What a P.I.T.A. ! directions? what directions? They call this an "easy" kit b/c the board is etched out. Estimate completion time @ 2hrs. Yeah, right! first off, would it kill Jameco to @ least cross ref hard to read part #s & color coded resistors? maybe label the individual bags? wasted hours on stupid stuff like: ohm testing resistors b/c the colors were not easy to distinguish. testing Led's for color b/c they are not labeled either. They don't even tell you max voltage for the Led's. first one I tested w/ a 9 Volt battery blew! & it's a 12V dc kit......hours of soldering & only 2/3 of the board works. This piece of crap is go'n where it belongs. in the trash.

Fun winter project. Had fun making some nice enclosures. Bought panel mounted pots, electrical connector and speaker connections.