What are your favourite electronics smells?

[steve30]

My Amiga 500+'s switch mode PSU smells nice once its warmed up. Not quite sure what the actual smell is or which component it comes from, but it is pleasant.

I also like the smell of Rosin.

[james_s]

I've mostly lost my sense of smell, but from memory I would vote for the smell of a warm tube-powered console radio.

That's pretty much the same as the arcade game smell. Makes sense I guess, warm dusty vacuum tube(s) inside an old wooden cabinet. I have a 1941 Philco console radio that I restored about 10 years ago that I use on a regular basis. There's one good retro radio station in the region that often plays period correct music. Unfortunately they drop their power level in the evening and there is a powerful station in the next state down that plays mostly mariachi music on the same frequency so both sometimes come in at once at night.

[mag_therm]

One time I spent 2 weeks on a nasty problem on an inverter in a far away land.
The thing was big enough to get into ( provided locked off!) and was located on a mezzanine above the worker's communal bathroom.
So at the shift changes the perfume from all the soap and shampoo would waft up into the cabinet.

Another one was a VFD with problems located near the ovens of a famous dessert pie company.
For years after, every time I ate or even smelled the hot pies I remembered the horrors of that early AC drive.

[Neper]

From a discussion in a German hifi forum:

In my experience, a burnt voice coil smells different.

[25 CPS]

I gave it some thought and there are several that come to mind.

First would be that warm dust smell that running vacuum tube equipment has once it's gotten up to temperature which has been mentioned by a bunch of people.  I bought a Hewlett-Packard 205AG and it had been on at the seller's place so I could test it and I loaded it into the back seat of the car so it couldn't shift around and get damaged on the way home.  I didn't notice the smell while it was running on the seller's dining room table but about 20 minutes into the drive, the lingering smell reached me in the driver's seat and it brought back memories right away.

Freshly unsealed magnetic tape would be another.  Along the same lines, freshly unsealed photographic film packages but I don't really associate that with electronics the way I do tape.

Warm model train transformers.  That'd be the top three for me.

[coppercone2]

how about PCB etchants, film, and so forth?

They were weird alien uncomfortable smells at first but when you realize what they do, you don't mind so much.

[jmelson]

Texas A&M University has a copy of the smaller superconducting cyclotron from Michigan State U's National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab.
It uses 3 20+ KW transmitting tubes running off about 18 KV DC.  They had a fire in one of the RF amps, that stunk up the whole building for at least a day.  I was on some zoom calls with their people and they were still complaining about the smell in the evening.  I'm guessing some plastic insulating material got arced over and started to burn.  Hope it wasn't Teflon!
  I don't know the actual power input to the TAMU cyclotron, but I know when MSU was running both of theirs at the same time, the DC supply was delivering 42 A at 18 KV DC!  YIKES!!!  That's 3/4 megawatt!

Jon

[Bud]

The smell of burned flash when i touched the anode of a keyed-in RF amplifier output tube... Cant say if was my favorite one but 40 years later i still remember it 

[AlbertL]

I'll go with the classics: rosin flux smoke, and the general under-the-chassis scent of warm vintage electronics (probably a mix of wax, varnish and phenolics).

Worst smell: the vomit-like odor of whatever plastic is used in cheap imported consumer electronics; think Radio Shack before they became cell-phones-only.

[strawberry]

gasoline

[Ed.Kloonk]

gasoline

Not smelling it too much, I hope.

[Neper]

Freshly unsealed magnetic tape would be another.

There was a time, when I could have told the various brands apart just by their smell. Scotch was probably the easiest because very distinct. Next came Ampex Grand Master.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Freshly unsealed magnetic tape would be another.

There was a time, when I could have told the various brands apart just by their smell. Scotch was probably the easiest because very distinct. Next came Ampex Grand Master.

I think it was Scotch tape that was musician Frank Zappa's engineer discovered after years of archival that the brand was the best in terms of preservation of the recorded material.

I wonder what substances made that brand so special. Nobody knew at the time. It was pot luck what you bought.

[james_s]

I wonder what substances made that brand so special. Nobody knew at the time. It was pot luck what you bought.

I'd guess it comes mostly down to the adhesive, and also the grain and consistency of the coating. The smell is almost certainly mostly the adhesive/binders.

[eti]

Well I've found out one of my LEAST favourite electronics smells - the smell of MG Chemicals 835 RA type flux! Yuck!

[helius]

The smoke or the liquid itself? I would say the liquid has a fairly mild smell similar to cough syrup.

[radar_macgyver]

gasoline

Yuck, no. I'm with Dave on this one - after getting used to an EV, going to a gas station is pretty awful.

I like the adhesive used on 3M VHB tape. Since they use it to hold together cellphones and the like, that's imo the "smell of new electronics".

[SL4P]

Coffee & doughnuts