On Sat, 11 Mar 2017, Ralph Mowery wrote:

In article ,
says...



I never had any problem with the color codes in the old days, because I
dont recall ever running into any resistors less than 10 ohms on the old
tube gear. It's just these small value ones that are tricky.

For the standard resistors it was almost second nature for me to just
look at a resistor and call out the value. There were only a few values
used most of the time, and then the last band for the multiplier.
Especially when most were the 10 % type.

Yes, after a while, you aren't so much "decoding" but just recognize the
value connected to the coding. Three red stripes? Of course that's 2200.
I can't even tell you what 4.7K is, but I'd know one when I saw it.

SO much effort put into mnemonics to remember the color code and cardboard
decoder rings, when all you have to do is spend some time looking at
resistors, like when you are sorting them out.

Michael