Really, you have a source for 9 mm pots with 6 mm shafts?
Ah. That’s cheating! 
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Playing life on easy mode y’know. Works like a charm with knobs like these: 5pcs Hat MF A04 potentiometer knob WH118 WX050 bakelite knob copper core inner hole 6mm hjxrhgal|Potentiometers| - AliExpress
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As an admittedly fairly pointless exercise, I looked into the answer to the question “What would it cost to get ten DIP TL074CN chips to me from various vendors?” Vendors were chosen at whim. For eBay and AliExpress of course it depends on the particular vendor within that system, and I picked one fairly arbitrarily, near but not necessarily at the bottom of the price range. Or two in the case of eBay, one (allegedly) in the US and one not. This post is not intended as endorsement of any vendor.
I added up the price for 10 chips, the lowest available shipping rate (to upstate New York), and in one case a fee imposed on orders under $20. I did not try to include sales tax.
eBay from China and AliExpress not surprisingly came out cheapest. Whether they’re in “too good to be true” land is up to you to decide.
Small Bear and Digi-key came out in the middle of the pack, but note they both are currently out of stock.
Amplified Parts and Newark were the most expensive. Allied evidently does not carry TL074s.
Obviously you could get very different results if you were looking for a different part or combination of parts, for different quantities, for shipment to a different country or region, for fast shipping, and so on, and obviously there are other vendors out there.
| Price | Vendor | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| $1.73 | eBay (dengwenha-18, China) | $1.73 x n/10 (price for 10 pcs) + $0 |
| $2.46 | AliExpress (Fantasy Electronics) | $0.99 x n/10 (price for 10 pcs) + $1.47 |
| $6.89 | Tayda | $0.59 x n + $0.99 |
| $11.70 | eBay (tevatronix, USA) | $3.91 x n/5 (price for 5 pcs) + $3.88 |
| $11.71 | *** Small Bear Electronics | $0.75 x n + $4.21 |
| $12.20 | *** Digi-key | $0.721 x n + $4.99 (n >= 10) |
| $15.20 | Mouser | $0.721 x n + $7.99 (n >= 10) |
| $15.39 | Jameco | $0.59 x n + $4.24 + $5.25 fee for <$20 order |
| $17.15 | Amplified Parts | $1.32 x n + $3.95 |
| $21.69 | * Newark | $1.17 x n + $9.99 (n >= 10) |
| ** Allied Electronics & Automation | PRODUCT NOT LISTED |
* American division of Farnell
** American division of RS Components
*** Currently out of stock
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“too good to be true”
For reference, the upstream price for a TL074CN is $0.206 ea @1ku.
(you can order 10 directly from TI, but then they want $0.591 ea and I didn’t click through all the way to see what shipping/handling/taxes they add, or if they even ship to private customers.)
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And yeah, checked local RS and they have a minimum order of 25 (a full tube) and can ship in December at the earliest. About 15% more expensive than Mouser/Digikey for that tube, but seems they offer free shipping on that order, so total price is fair (Mouser/Digikey have free shipping above $50).
EDIT: Digikey has zero stock (as mentioned above) and expects delivery in October. Mouser has them in stock, but the price there (for 25 units) is closer to RS, but still slightly below. Also, RS has two SKUs for TL074CN with slightly different prices. And I suspect this will all differ if I do this exercise again in a week 
I’ve been buying mainly electronics components from aliexpress since 2015 (mostly for synth related projects). In about 1000 purchases I never encountered fake products and / or experienced obviously bad quality components.
Only a handfull of products I received was defective on arrival and I always got my money back after disputing the order.
For the products that got lost or did not arrive in time (this happened with about 6 % of ordered goods) I always got a refund. Most times I then ordered them again and got them all right.
The mean time for a product to arrive in the Netherlands for the first 4 or 5 years was about 22 days but lately shipping times have changed mostly for the better with products sometimes arriving even within a week to 10 days. I gather this has to do with stock which is sent from Europe rather than from China. The variation in shipping time has allways been large. To remedy his I often plan ahead and buy components in advance for new projects or replenish supplies when numbers get low.
One odd thing though: whenever I order SD-memory cards they either arrive very very late (>> 60 days) but usually do not arrive at all / get lost. So I tend to order those elsewhere.
So yes, Aliexpress, definately worth it !
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My AliExpress experience has been pretty positive. I will say that when using them it’s important to scan through and do some minimal vetting of the individual sellers — I’ve avoided some after having to translate comments left on their entries from Russian. Jellybean components are your best bet — anything rare or vintage can be much more of a crapshoot than TL072s and 2N3904s. Counterfeit parts are out there, but the price difference doesn’t justify the time and effort to re-badge TL084s as TL074s, y’know?
Shipping sometimes takes long enough that I’ve forgotten I ordered the items by the time they show up, but that’s almost a bonus, you know? Like a surprise birthday present.
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TL07x counterfeiting is certainly a thing: See
https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/038_fakeopamp/
In fact I’d be more inclined to trust non jellybean parts from an unknown vendor. What could you rebadge to make a fake PT2399? Anything in the same package, yes, but it’ll be obvious as soon as you test it. Whereas a rebadged LM324 will pass for a TL072 if you don’t look too closely.
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I think the most productive thing here since there are a lot of differing experiences is to document known good venders at Ali, and what was bought.
This way we can build a network of higher confidence venders in AliExpress that our own community trusts.
This if course fails if people don’t recognize they got duds, or the experience shifts from person to person. This is why I think a vender should get multiple good reccomendations before they count.
@jos
You have good record keeping and have also had good results. It would be of great assistance to share the vendors you have partnered with with success.
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What would be the best way to proceed?
A shared spreadsheet?
We could do a wiki-style thread if someone were inclined to do so.
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Fantasy Electronics, mentioned above as selling TL074s at a price low enough to set off warning bells in my mind, also sells cheap MF-A0x type knobs; many of the knobs adorning my synth came from them and I’d happily buy more from them. So it’s not just vendors, it’s vendor-product pairs you would need to track.
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Right. Might be good to aggregate good benders based on products. Since I imagine the number of products that would need to be archived or referenced would be a lower cardinality.
Maybe a thread like the cheap components thread.
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I get the impression that there is quite a turn over of vendors, and that whatever vendor one may have had good experience with may not be in existence anymore after a while or they may have changed names and thus be unrecognisable. I hardly ever recognise a vendor name when I order something, and most names seem rather random to me anyway. When looking at a vendors store it often strikes me as odd that they sell some electronic component as they often seem te mainly retail in other products and the one I’m interested in seems the odd one out. So it may be that a quite lot of the vendors trade in everything they can get their hands on.
With all my purchases at the top of my head only in seldom cases I have returned to the same vendor when reordering electronic components. Most times my choice is lead by total price and sometimes if an offer sounds too good to be true by checking the comments (and their translations).
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Wow, I stand corrected on that. Wild, both that 074s are getting counterfeited and that Jameco got bit by that. I guess chip shortages hit everybody.
(I’ve rarely ordered from Jameco, but had reasonable service and quality when I have, and they’re very well established — you can see ads for them in US electronics magazines going back to at least the 1970s.)
AliExpress retailers that I’ve had success with, and what I got:
thanksforyou - one of those dodgy 100-effect modules (got one after I saw the Modular In a Week guy build a module around it)
Jane’s Component Store - PJ-301M 3.5mm mono jacks
GHXAMP Worldwide - a 4-input stereo mixer (that I modded for my wife into having switchable speaker/headphone output, for bedside entertainment)
Excel Valley - 3.5mm mono patch cables, 6-way mult widgets
Worth noting that on one order of cables, they sent the wrong length — so they sent replacements and I got to keep both.
Victory Electronics — Chips, WS2812 LED rings, smd-to-DIP breakouts, crimp pins
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Don’t order parts from places like Amazon and Aliexpress. 9 times out of 10 they are fake and will not work properly in my experience. Dealers like Jameco, Allelectronics, Digi-Key, and Mouser are the way to go (especially if you don’t need 1000 of something lol)
Edit: I just read down further to find that even Jameco is being hit by these shortages (I doubt they were aware of the fact they were counterfeit). That caught me off guard to say the least
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How many times have you bought electronic parts from Amazon and Aliexpress that turned out to be fake?
I think its safe to say that during a shortage, its not the best time to evaluate whether a shop regularly deals with fakes.
In the defense of marketplaces like ali and amazon, a shortage would absolutely shift the ratio of real/fake on the side of the fake by necessity. Even if fakes arnt more common, the scarcity of genuine chips would shift the rate of fakes naturally.
That said, it still pays to be careful in these times.