Cheap Sockets

[peAk]

So I recently bought a bunch of cheap 14 & 16 pin sockets off Ebay and they arrived somewhat bent up. You get what you pay for, I know....

...what I am curious about before I start straightening the legs and using them is...

has anyone had defective sockets? I would hate to solder any of these in, have them not work and have to desolder and possibly ruin a PCB. Maybe others have used cheap ones and not had any problems. I assumed sockets were sockets and this was something I could skimp out on. 

Experiences?

[alanp]

Try using machined pin sockets from Smallbear, then Tayda, and you'll be singing a different tune.

Tayda's leaf pin sockets are not too bad, though.

The only truly defective socket I've had (as opposed to slightly wankerous to use) was with a valve socket in an amp build, where the solder travelled down and the pin seized up entirely with solder.

[RobA]

I like Tayda's cheap machined SIP sockets. They're one of the few things I'll still get there. They're certainly not as good as high quality machined sockets, but they do work fine.

I have the cheap leaf pin sockets from Tayda and a couple of other sources. They've all worked fine. I actually prefer them to machined sockets in cases where I know I'm going to want to exchange the part lots of times.

The only socket I've ever had that failed or was defective was some expensive machined SIP sockets that were totally useless because all of the sockets were blocked part of the way down and the parts' legs wouldn't go in.