best places for an electronics hobbyist to live in

[xaxaxa]

We all know that the chinese are highly privileged when it comes to easy access to prototyping services and parts (you can e.g. get a PCBA made and delivered in days for a low price, and easy access to parts on the shenzhen market via taobao). Shipping within the entire country is fast and cheap.

In most of the developed world it's impossible to find local PCB/PCBA services for a reasonable price, and shipping from china is either slow or very expensive. Mouser/digikey are reasonable for low end parts, but the markup is just too high for e.g. FPGAs, RF power transistors, mass market but "high end" parts like the AD9363, ADF4351, etc. There is also no real refurbished parts market for things like cellular base station power transistors, where price difference is usually two orders of magnitude between new and refurbished parts. Tooling is also problematic; I needed a small table saw designed for cutting PCBs, but it just simply doesn't exist outside of china, and it's too heavy to be shipped economically.

However I was thinking where else in the world do people enjoy similar levels of privilege? Russia? Japan? Is there any alternative to china if you want to be productive as a part/full-time electronics hobbyist/entrepreneur?

[wraper]

Russia is certainly not one of them. It's actually on the worse end. Availability of parts is not that good, they are quite expensive and most of distributors won't even work with private customers. Test equipment is expensive. No cheap used equipment, unless it's very old Soviet stuff.  No cheap PCB services either, and there are only a few of them to begin with. You'd be in much better position sitting in countryside of US rather than in capital of Russia.

[jpanhalt]

To avoid shipping from Digikey, you might move to Thief River Falls, MN.   Nice place in August, if you can avoid the mosquitoes.

As for a small table saw, Micro-mark and Proxxon sell one.  I have the Micromark version and have used it for years with a carbide blade for cutting and scoring PCB's.

[apis]

I could imagine the next Shenzhen would be in India in the future, they also have a large economy and have an interest in technology, but I doubt there will ever be anything comparable to China today. The incredible economical and technological growth in China is probably going to be the world record for a long long time. China have a population of 1.4 billion people and land area of 9.6 million km², the potential for growth there is unprecedented. Other countries will do the same transformation no doubt, but there just aren't any other countries of the same size.

[OwO]

Japan reached where China is today a long time ago. I wonder what it's like now? How about Korea? I recall seeing mentions of reasonable PCB services there.

[linux-works]

silicon valley used to be a great place for the hardware hobby.  its still ok but over time, things erode.  just this month, a long time staple 'halted (hsc) electronics' closed to the public (seems they are selling it off and resorting to ebay-only, from now on, until its all gone.  my guess.)

that place was incredible, for surplus parts, used parts that you'd still want, 'new old stock' stuff, mechanical parts, test equip, wire, a whole wall of TH resistors by value, a whole wall of screws and standoffs.  a whole section for SMD reels.

now closed ;(

there used to be haltek, quement, weird stuff warehouse.  all gone, now.  things are not at all what they used to be, 20 yrs ago.

I think there's a large place in milpitas (excess solutions) that can fill the gap, if they are still open (not even sure).

I used to be able to tell people about all these parts stores, but now they're almost all gone.  housing is really overpriced and jobs are not long-term or reliable anymore.

I guess the shine from silicon valley is now gone.  its replaced by non-hardware products like bookface and its ilk.  this does seem to be a trend.

[jfiresto]

Germany is pretty good because it still makes things. Electronic parts distributors, PCB houses and tooling are all not a problem. Proxxon, based in Luxemburg, for example, makes table top power tools which are widely available, including a couple circular saws that may be what you are after. I could even special order one through an ordinary home improvement store, about 1 km from my flat, that stocks other Proxxon tools.

Less-electronically related materials and tools are also not a problem. I am currently fixing up a couple 40-year old microscopes and needed, among other things, a little, black POM rod stock, to make a lens thread adapter, and a phenolic ball to replace a missing changeover lever. I quickly found people selling POM cutoff on ebay.de at decent prices. As to the phenolic ball, once I found its canonical number, DIN 319C, I was in like Flynn.

[Bill158]

halted (hsc) electronics' closed to the public (seems they are selling it off and resorting to ebay-only, from now on, until its all gone.  my guess.)  now closed

I am still in deep depression over the closing of HSC!   A LARGE LOSS!

I think there's a large place in milpitas (excess solutions) that can fill the gap, if they are still open (not even sure).

EXCESS SOLUTIONS is now located at Alma and 7th Street in South San Jose,CA.  They do have a large stock of components, resistors, nuts/bolts and screws, but lack a lot of the ICs that HSC has/had.  I have found a few ICs at HSC that are simply unobtainium anywhere else including evil-bay or on the web!
Bill

[ebastler]

Proxxon, based in Luxemburg, for example, makes table top power tools which are widely available, including a couple circular saws that may be what you are after.

Proxxon makes some decent tools, but I recommend that you stay away from that saw. I have one at it is useless for PCBs. The sawblade and its bearing/mount flex far too easily, making straight cuts largely impossible. The model-making and RC forums are full of modification tips, but I don't think it's worth the effort.

[jfiresto]

... Proxxon makes some decent tools, but I recommend that you stay away from that saw....

Would you avoid both models, the KS 230 and the FET? I was thinking about getting the FET (last week, in fact) to cut some 1mm FR4, but realized it is so thin I can simply score and snap it.

[ebastler]

Would you avoid both models, the KS 230 and the FET? I was thinking about getting the FET (last week, in fact) to cut some 1mm FR4, but realized it is so thin I can simply score and snap it.

I only have (bad) experience with the KS 230. Going by the photographs available online, the FET looks like a more solidly built tool, but I can't really comment on it. 

[rstofer]

I live in the Central Valley of California, some 90+ miles from Silicon Valley.  I have no problem getting components from DigiKey, Mouser, Newark or any of the other reputable suppliers.  I wouldn't buy from China anyway.

PCBs are expensive so the layout better be right the first time:  ExpressPCB.com.  There are other services that bundle board production and farm it out to China but I don't really want to wait.

Equipment is plentiful, Amazon ships fast, Priority Mail is a great way to have stuff shipped, everything works out fine.  No complaints!

[Red Squirrel]

A place that is cheap to live in and where you can own a decent size property to expand your hobby, as well as have a good quality of life.   With the ability to get parts shipped from Digikey within a week (often only a few days) and tons of cheap PCB prototyping services around it makes no sense to try to live in a big central city that is expensive to live in and super crowded with a lesser quality of life when you can take your hobby anywhere.  The hustle and bustle is just not worth it imo.   As nice as it would be to have easy access to things that are normally not available locally, it's not worth the extra cost of being in those places and inability to own property.

[KL27x]

Anywhere in the US is just fine. No VAT. DHL shipping for 20-30.00.

Re Proxxon saw: If you want to make straight cuts in FR-4, you can use a 15.00 angle grinder with a 50 cent cutoff disc. Just clamp the board to a table and wear a dust mask. The result is fast and clean.

The Proxxon table saw would be more attractive for this kind of thing if you could lower the blade to score partway through. This would limit the dust escape and be more versatile. In case you wanted to make multiple pcbs, you could populate before depanelizing.

The greatest tool short of a CNC mill, IMO, is a tilting router table. See Woodgears.ca for Matthias Wandel's tilting router lift. It's dead simple (if you remove the gear lift mechanism). I adapted it to use with a Proxxon rotary tool, initially. You can easily score and cut miles of FR-4 with a single 1/8" carbide endmill. And you can do complex shaping, too.

[jfiresto]

Anywhere in the US is just fine. No VAT. DHL shipping for 20-30.00....

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny. For example, I discovered yesterday that I needed some 8mm, M3, male/female, brass spacers. My usual source charges 0.14 euros, quantity one ($0.16 at the current rate, including 19% VAT). The cheapest I can find at Digikey are $0.60 each, which to me is like paying 346% VAT. Digikey will drop their price if I buy more: to $0.3914, quantity 1500, or a mere 191% VAT. Similarly sized, non-metric spacers are even more expensive. In the end, I ordered twenty for 3.30 euros ($3.75), including three day delivery.

What I find a little strange is that twenty odd years ago, the U.S. was generally cheaper.
[EDIT: removed trailing blank lines & changed euro -> euros.]

[OwO]

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny. For example, I discovered yesterday that I needed some 8mm, M3, male/female, brass spacers. My usual source charges 0.14 euro, quantity one ($0.16 at the current rate, including 19% VAT). The cheapest I can find at Digikey are $0.60 each, which to me is like paying 346% VAT. Digikey will drop their price if I buy more: to $0.3914, quantity 1500, or a mere 191% VAT. Similarly sized, non-metric spacers are even more expensive. In the end, I ordered twenty for 3.30 euros ($3.75), including three day delivery.

What I find a little strange is that twenty odd years ago, the U.S. was generally cheaper.

And that's nothing compared to paying $57 for a XC7Z010 at digikey whereas it goes for about $14 on the market right now.

[ebastler]

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny.

For the Europeans here, just a quick plug for tme.eu, based in Poland. While their inventory is no match for Mouser and Digikey, they do have a pretty good selection of modern components. Their prices are much more reasonable, including reasonable shipping cost via DHL to most European countries. They require minimum order quantities (per component) on the cheaper components, but we are talking hobbyist-friendly numbers here -- 1 to 10 units.

No affiliation etc. 

[cdev]

Do any search engines exist to do parts or BOM pricing comparisons?

[Mr. Scram]

There are other factors too. The US has a large supply of relatively cheap high quality test equipment.

[cdev]

Do Digi-key (or similar firms) have a walk-in counter, if somebody actually does live nearby? Many of the stores in the Bay Area do/did, which is really nice.

To avoid shipping from Digikey, you might move to Thief River Falls, MN.   Nice place in August, if you can avoid the mosquitoes.

[elecman14]

Do any search engines exist to do parts or BOM pricing comparisons?

Think you want this: https://octopart.com/bom-tool/

As far as the table saw. You should look into using wet tile saw to cut pcbs. They work well, not sure if you would need to bake the pcb after cutting due to the water from the blade but it does keep the dust down. Fiberglass is not a fun thing to inhale. 

[Richard Crowley]

There are other services that bundle board production and farm it out to China but I don't really want to wait.

I know that OSH Park is a PCB consolidator, but they use US-based board fabricators.
Which are the consolidators that use Asian fabricators?

[coppercone2]

Yo how much money are you trying to save. You can pay for these services in america. Who would move to god damn communist china to save a couple of bucks on fucking pcb and counterfit shenzen parts?

This is nonsense.you will accumulate more shit then you can understand. If you want to run a sweat shop i understand... but a hobby?? How is shipping ever significant in terms of cost of a home design when compared to labor and parts cost?? You can bill yourself 20$ an hour easy even as a novice if you do electronics and thats lowballing the shit out of it.


All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

[ebastler]

However I was thinking where else in the world do people enjoy similar levels of privilege? Russia? Japan? Is there any alternative to china if you want to be productive as a part/full-time electronics hobbyist/entrepreneur?

As coppercone just said, in rather clear terms: For hobbyists that is a moot question. Who would consider moving (be it to China or wherever) based on the price of components for the electronics hobby?! 

For "electronics entrepreneurs", there is obviously no universal answer. Just look at where electronics come from these days: Mass-produced consumer goods largely come from China. But high-end consumer goods, and even more so specialized instruments for industrial and scientific use, often come from various other countries. For these products, access to domain expertise and strong design teams, and being close to your customers (geographically and culturally), is more important than parts cost.

[xaxaxa]

Yo how much money are you trying to save. You can pay for these services in america. Who would move to god damn communist china to save a couple of bucks on fucking pcb and counterfit shenzen parts?

This is nonsense.you will accumulate more shit then you can understand. If you want to run a sweat shop i understand... but a hobby?? How is shipping ever significant in terms of cost of a home design when compared to labor and parts cost?? You can bill yourself 20$ an hour easy even as a novice if you do electronics and thats lowballing the shit out of it.


All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

It isn't just a hobby; I do run a (small) business selling test equipment. In the past year or so total R&D expenditures make up about 10% of total costs, so if I bloat that 5x (which is an underestimate if you want to get the same speed of service in the USA), that is an increase in total cost of 50%, meaning my product retail price will have to go up proportionally. If it does it'll be much less competitive compared to alternatives. This is also completely ignoring the manufacturing and logistics side, which is actually a much bigger problem.

Cost isn't even the biggest issue; the prototype PCBA service (from JLCPCB) was an absolute game changer and there is no way I want to go back to manual PNP of 0402 passives for an afternoon per prototype. With this I can tackle much more complicated projects (like a zynq board with ddr3 ram and sdr transceiver) that can have hundreds of passives per board. I haven't been able to find another services like this anywhere. Unfortunately the JLCPCB assembly service isn't offered outside china.

[OwO]

All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

How does the average hobbyist in the states acquire test equipment? Do they fork out $20k for a new Keysight? I think from reading the forum most people buy broken equipment and fix it themselves, which surely involves a lot of "refurbishing and testing of test equipment" compared to buying a decently priced new one from the Communists 

[jfiresto]

... This is nonsense.... If you want to run a sweat shop i understand... but a hobby?? How is shipping ever significant in terms of cost of a home design?...

I can think of two reasons. First, some of us used to be poor and have trouble breaking old habits. And second, a place where parts and tools are cheaper and more plentiful is also a place that demonstrates more interest in and support for your hobby.

[floobydust]

I thought you're working as a PhD candidate in America?

[dnwheeler]

To avoid shipping from Digikey, you might move to Thief River Falls, MN.   Nice place in August, if you can avoid the mosquitoes.

BTW, the temperature in Thief River Falls tomorrow and Wednesday morning is predicted to be around -37° F (around -38° C) actual temperature. The wind-chill factor could be around -60° F.

[Bud]

All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

How does the average hobbyist in the states acquire test equipment? Do they fork out $20k for a new Keysight? I think from reading the forum most people buy broken equipment and fix it themselves, which surely involves a lot of "refurbishing and testing of test equipment" compared to buying a decently priced new one from the Communists 

That is because decently priced communist equpipment is badly designed. I will be first in the line to buy one when the quality will be on par with 20-30 years old HP. The problem is this will never happen.

[coppercone2]

All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

How does the average hobbyist in the states acquire test equipment? Do they fork out $20k for a new Keysight? I think from reading the forum most people buy broken equipment and fix it themselves, which surely involves a lot of "refurbishing and testing of test equipment" compared to buying a decently priced new one from the Communists 

They have better features, ergonomics and lack of bugs which makes it worth doing. Also once refurbished its probably more reliable if you don't cut corners and do all the caps, rework all the connector solder joints/problem areas and check for things like components that are running unusually hot with thermal camera.

My rigol had a explosion in it like 2 months after I bought it. I have had stuff thats between 10-40 years old working fine for years but its quality. Took me a long time to figure out what the pop and smell was (happened when I was running like 6 bits of test gear).

[coppercone2]

Yo how much money are you trying to save. You can pay for these services in america. Who would move to god damn communist china to save a couple of bucks on fucking pcb and counterfit shenzen parts?

Let's make it clear. In my shoes, I don't give a shit if Americans have a job to feed themselves or not.
I only care about the cheapest cost.
When I do small boards, I use OSHPark. I don't care if it's made in USA. I care about its cheapness.
When I do bigger boards, I will be happily ditch it if the Chinese NRE is cheaper than {huge_area}*$10/sqin.
Same for Wurth. It offers the cheapest fully customized HDI solution.

And BTW, there's no report on fake LCSC parts. LCSC carries a lot of cloned parts, under Chinese P/N, clearly states it's a functional equivalent.
They never tried to sell a Chinese {whatever_part_that_works_like_LM2596} as a TI LM2596.

And I would care about satisfied customers and making a lasting positive impression on the industry I am working in. As an engineer I take responsibility for supplier choice and its my fault if something breaks.

If you just go by cost, you will end up as the guy that 'passes the buck'. If you get something from China and it breaks and you piss someone off, they will blame your decision to use China, India, etc.

[floobydust]

Being an electronics hobbyist- it's in your heart, not your wallet.

As a kid, I was poor and I raided dumpsters and recycling bins, back alleys.
Surplus electronics is the most fun to take apart, figure out, and repair or strip for parts.

Building new stuff with little boards out of china is what everyone seems to be doing. These are limited due to their cheapness and weak design, so your results are never that great. Then you have a million arduino shields lying round too.

Breadboarding is dying out due to the proliferation of SMT technology. Now, you have to lay out a PCB in order to play with an IC.

Best place to live for all this? I don't think it matters now, you can order in all that you need.

[jmelson]

Anywhere in the US is just fine. No VAT. DHL shipping for 20-30.00.

Yeah, that WAS true!  Now, instead of VAT, we have tariffs!  I just bought a bunch of chips for a project, and had to pay 19 - 23% tariffs on them!  Ouch!
Some distributors show the tariff amount right up front, some of them DON'T, and you get a nasty surprise AFTER you place the order.  Not so nice!

In St. Louis, I can generally get FedEx ground delivery from Digi-Key in about 3 days for under $8 for a small box.  Mouser takes a bit longer.
Some of the other dist's take longer, for a variety of reasons.  But, another big problem is just finding stock.  I ended up buying parts for this project from
SIX different dist's, partly to find good prices, but also a number of them didn't have enough of specific parts.  They only had tens of parts in stock, when I needed 100 - 250 each item.

The new thing is Digi-Key won't tell you if they have a wide range of SMT parts in stock until you place the order!  I think this is massively deceptive, and I steered part of this order away from them for that reason.  So, I only ordered parts that showed # in stock, and the rest of the stuff from others like Mouser.
Digi-Key also doesn't have a full range of 1% SMT resistor values in stock, or they have crazy prices like $60 for a full reel.  Kind of the same on Mouser, one value of 1% resistor is $10/reel, another value is $60.  And, of course, don't get me started on SMT caps!  YIKES!

Jon

[jmelson]

BTW, the temperature in Thief River Falls tomorrow and Wednesday morning is predicted to be around -37° F (around -38° C) actual temperature. The wind-chill factor could be around -60° F.

And, this is why I am VERY happy to be several hundred miles south of there!  If I ABSOLUTELY need something tomorrow, I CAN pay for FedEx next day service.
Otherwise, I'm glad to wait a few days.  And, my nose is not going to freeze right off!

Jon

[jmelson]

They have better features, ergonomics and lack of bugs which makes it worth doing. Also once refurbished its probably more reliable if you don't cut corners and do all the caps, rework all the connector solder joints/problem areas and check for things like components that are running unusually hot with thermal camera.

My rigol had a explosion in it like 2 months after I bought it. I have had stuff thats between 10-40 years old working fine for years but its quality. Took me a long time to figure out what the pop and smell was (happened when I was running like 6 bits of test gear).

Yup, I have a bunch of cast-off HP and Tek gear.  I actually have an HP digital scope that I hauled out of a dumpster!  It was perfectly working, just old (and DOES have just about the worst user interface I've EVER seen, clearly HP's first foray into this type of gear.)  I don't use it much (due to the awful UI, but when you need a digital scope, it does the job.)  I use a Tek 2465 that I got used for most work.  I have a bunch of Harrison Labs (taken over by HP) lab supplies that were actually part of the NASA Gemini project, so they are now over FIFTY years old, and still work like new (except for a little jitter on the pots sometimes).

Jon

[apis]

It's pretty bad here, you can hardly get anything locally. It's a little better now with the EU, but still not great. I think it just comes down to the fact there isn't enough demand for such electronics hobby things in a small country. The US is much larger and have had a lot of electronics industry. Still nothing compared to modern China which is now the manufacturing hub of the world. Shenzhen is a city with 13 million people, that in itself is more than all of Sweden.

[coppercone2]

They have better features, ergonomics and lack of bugs which makes it worth doing. Also once refurbished its probably more reliable if you don't cut corners and do all the caps, rework all the connector solder joints/problem areas and check for things like components that are running unusually hot with thermal camera.

My rigol had a explosion in it like 2 months after I bought it. I have had stuff thats between 10-40 years old working fine for years but its quality. Took me a long time to figure out what the pop and smell was (happened when I was running like 6 bits of test gear).

Yup, I have a bunch of cast-off HP and Tek gear.  I actually have an HP digital scope that I hauled out of a dumpster!  It was perfectly working, just old (and DOES have just about the worst user interface I've EVER seen, clearly HP's first foray into this type of gear.)  I don't use it much (due to the awful UI, but when you need a digital scope, it does the job.)  I use a Tek 2465 that I got used for most work.  I have a bunch of Harrison Labs (taken over by HP) lab supplies that were actually part of the NASA Gemini project, so they are now over FIFTY years old, and still work like new (except for a little jitter on the pots sometimes).

Jon

not to mention you learn about quality engineering when it breaks and you take the gear apart.

[bsfeechannel]

I was shopping on ebay the other day and found this from a seller in ShenZhen.

Buyers from remote area,such as South America,Brazil,Uruguay,Argentina) and Africa,the expedited int'l shipping require US$45.00.

Delivery time:

Asia countries ( 8 to 30 days)

UK,Ireland (8 to 30 days)

Australia ( 10 to 30 days)

Western Europe(10 to 30 days)

Canada,Italy,Brazil and other remote countries(40 to 50 days)

So, all you have to do is not to live in remote countries such as Canada, Italy, Brazil, anywhere else in South America or Africa, and you'll be fine.

[Zucca]

if you want to surf on used equipment US is pretty much the reference point of used crap.
If you want to buy new stuff then china should be cheap....
Japan would be interesting for me: powder in winter, nice spot to live, US on one side and China on the other.

...and there I am remaining  attached to my mamma (in) Italia...

In november I should go in China, the plan is to buy a new PC Mobo: TR 2950x, ECC RAM....

[coppercone2]

and life critical

[coppercone2]

you know (some) original (or repair) f14 tomcat parts were made in peoples basements right?

the military used to do this, you could get a job doing machine work and sending in parts if you had a shop back in like, the 70's. It's not the worst idea in the world for stuff that can be fully inspected, unlike a IC or transistor. I know private people that used to do just that. I was shown a bag of old tomcat parts someone had lying around in a shopping bag in a dirty basement. Like struts and shit.

I was told you just basically had to mail it in if you got a job. They would x-ray it, do some crack inspection, etc. Made in someones garage.

Military makes their own home made replacement parts too (field mechanic/machinists), for aviation too.

Apparently cheaper and faster to get weird stuff since there is no management and other corpo-bullshit. Same with guns. NO markup on a army of managers and secretaries (and the owner) to build stuff for the army when all you need is one smart guy and some tools.

[coppercone2]

unlike a IC or transistor

That's why big subcontractors have ESD and other quality control protocols.
And should something F up, there are a whole list of post-mortal analysis on dead electronics.
When you get into that kind of things, FIB, SEM and many more are just what you do on a daily basis.

no question that unless its a really specific sub-assembly or really secret its better to use a company. However quality is higher with a passionate craftsman because there are no corporate stresses.

[Red Squirrel]

I was shopping on ebay the other day and found this from a seller in ShenZhen.

Buyers from remote area,such as South America,Brazil,Uruguay,Argentina) and Africa,the expedited int'l shipping require US$45.00.

Delivery time:

Asia countries ( 8 to 30 days)

UK,Ireland (8 to 30 days)

Australia ( 10 to 30 days)

Western Europe(10 to 30 days)

Canada,Italy,Brazil and other remote countries(40 to 50 days)

So, all you have to do is not to live in remote countries such as Canada, Italy, Brazil, anywhere else in South America or Africa, and you'll be fine.

I hate the fact that we're even treated like a "remote country".   It's not like we're some tiny island in the middle of the ocean.  We border the states which is the hub of everything, you'd think we'd get better treatment.   It is true that buying stuff in general can be harder though.  I find anything "specialty" like solar panels or odd ball electrical stuff is very hard to find here.  Most sites don't have an option to buy or show prices. No good reason why it should be this way.

That said I live in northern Ontario, and we still have access to things like Digikey, Amazon, Ebay etc so can still manage.    I prefer the quality of life of being in the north so it's a trade off I guess. 

[floobydust]

Electronics hobby is now only about costs and shipping? 

Nothing is more fun than checking out another hobbyist's workshop, or doing a swap meet.
Having a community, clubs, talking to others in the craft is important.

Internet forums can help but some have poor signal/noise ratio and trolls that piss on everything.
Hobbyists end up in solitude working alone on their projects. It's too bad flea markets and maker gatherings are not considered.

[David Hess]

In the US the best places are near the various old aerospace companies for easy access to surplus instruments.  These areas also tend to have old surplus electronics shops.

[bsfeechannel]

I hate the fact that we're even treated like a "remote country".

I posted it because I found it hilarious.

I prefer the quality of life of being in the north so it's a trade off I guess.

Home is where the WiFi connects automatically. The rest can be arranged.

[cdev]

The South Bay in the SF Bay Area, particularly Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose, /Palo Alto/Redwood City/ Fremont/Hayward/Milpitas

The Bay Area is still a great place to be into electronics.

In the past, there were also great used bookstores around there that had amazing treasures as far as old technical books go too. I don't know if any of them still exist.

In the US the best places are near the various old aerospace companies for easy access to surplus instruments.  These areas also tend to have old surplus electronics shops.

[TERRA Operative]

My experience in Japan is alright.
Akihabara is easy to visit on the way to work for parts (still got looottssss of tube stuff, but a few of the old guys have been retiring and closing their small assorted parts shops in the last few years, still a stack of good stuff around, modern and old school) and Yahoo Auctions is awesome for cheap bargains on old boat anchors, especially the more obscure stuff that no-one else bids on.
PCB's come fast from China and Digikey is free shipping for orders over $50.

Not really worth getting stuff manufactured here beyond a few specific cases when china is just there, but that's not a hobbyist concern.

[KaneTW]

I just use the big-name distributors most of the time. There's still a big price difference sometimes and I do wonder if there are cheaper options, but none that are easy to find.

I'm wondering, where did you find the XC7Z010 for cheap? Googling only gives me the same price point.