I also have come across a few symbols on various shematics that aren't anywhere in the book... which I guess is OK, as this is a beginner's guide, and not a "definitive collection." I did, however, just expect a little more.

With all that said, I would still recommend the book to people just starting out with schematics, because it really will help you, and the price is right.

37 of 38 found the following review helpful:


good place to start  Jan 30, 2005 By demomo
I'm not a particularly techie sort of person, but I found I needed to have a grasp of the electronics of some of the equipment I use (I'm a musician). Most beginners books are overwhelming in theory and completeness and end up more confusing than anything else. This book is baby talk and exactly what I needed. The five stars are for its simplicity and usefulness. It has flaws and it's not exciting to read, but it has the simplest explanations of components I have come across. If you don't need to know everything, but just fix your wah wah or explore a little circuit bending, this book will demystify a lot of electronics for you. It won't tell you how to do anything, but it will enable you to figure out what you need to know from more complicated books. If, like me, you've started with electronics a few times and given up because the books you've used have offered way too much information and spent too much time on electrons, or just been written from too knowlegable a point of view (one 'basic' book I tried has four pages on capacitors that I read several times without really ending up knowing what they did), this is the book for you. It will make the books that have frustrated you in the past far more useful.

23 of 26 found the following review helpful:


great book  Apr 20, 2004 By Tom ledlum
This book is an excellent book for anyone who wants to have basic knowledge of reading schematic. I read this book like I was taken a course. It is not a love novel. It took me three weeks because I wanted to adequately digest, understand, and be able to apply what I read. So I didn't run through it like most forks does and be disappointed later. Great book. Anyone wanting to buy this book should do so with a mindset to study it not just read it. Maybe this book needs few improvements but hey what do I know. I got all I wanted out of it.

17 of 19 found the following review helpful:


Don't bother  Dec 18, 2007 By Keith Ostertag
I bought this on impulse while ordering another book. Sorry I did, wasted my money. I can't really figure out who the intended audience is: If you have never been exposed to electrical schematics you wouldn't likely want this compendium of symbols with no conceptual background, and if you have had even a little conceptual background you have already been introduced to most of this. You don't need a book to find out what the schematic drawing of a transistor is, for instance, because any instructional material dealing with electronics circuits that you look at will include that information. Reading the individual symbols used in circuit diagrams and schematics isn't difficult- they are just symbols you can look up in any table of electronic symbols. The difficult part is conceptualizing how the components work together by "reading" the schematic- following the signal or current flow or being able to identify functional blocks, something this book does not help you with. All the circuits used as examples in this book are very basic, and the theory that is discussed is very superficial. I am not saying this book has no value, but it's value is minimal and can be easily found in the introductory chapters of most any primer on electronic circuits. For that I recommend a similar vintage TAB book written by G. Randy Sloan entitled "TAB Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics".

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Get this book!!!!!!!  Sep 05, 2007 By Chris Kissel
I'm just getting started teaching myself electronics. I've never been able to make heads or tails of a schematic. However, after about 2 evenings reading this book, I now have no problem reading the schematics for the beginners projects I've been working on. This book also explains WHY some of the symbols look the way they do, which goes a long way to help in reading schematics even if there is a symbol a little different than what's in the book. I would recommend this to anyone learning electronics.

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