soldering for idiots help please

[caprile]

Hi, i'm replacing the circuitry in my old guitar. I have no idea about how to solder, and all I've found is sites with help for a little more than beginners (stuff like 'tin the wire and put it in the cap'). Do you have any links with help for total beginners? thanks!

[dcord]

It's really easy, in fact I taught myself how to solder. Assuming you have a soldering iron, practice on some junk parts. I learned on old circuit cards.

If you're installing a new pickup, try stripping enough of the wire so that you can thread it through the hole in the pickup switch lug and bend it over one time to stay in place. Hold the soldering iron on there for a few seconds then apply the solder to the lug or wire. You shouldn't hit the solder to the iron itself, but I do it that way sometimes just to get the solder started. Use just enough to fill the lug and cover the wires. It's like a weld, you want to fill it, but not leave it weak. Too much solder generally leads to a "cold" solder, which is brittle and will break.

Good luck!

[darren wilson]

The method of putting the wires through the holes of the terminals to hold them is great... until you decide you want to remove those wires. It's a major pain in the butt at that point.

[caprile]

actually i'm replacing the whole thing, switch, pots, etc. i'll start on junk parts.
question: how do you solder with 2 hands only? i use one for the iron, one for the solder....and how do i hold the cable to be soldered in place?

also, what solder iron is better, the 'pencil' type or the 'gun' with a loop?

[dcord]

Hold the wire you're soldering in place by hooking it around the lug you're soldering it to.

Personally I prefer the pencil type iron.

[horstausmforst]

I also prefer the 'pencil' iron. I often use a set of plyers with some rubber bands around it to hold the cables in place. One with a bent tip is great. Lay it onto the guitar body so that it reaches into the open cavity, and you can easily attach the cable to it and hold it in place like you want to.
Umm.. If nobody understood what I'm trying to say, I can reply later using a dictionary; sorry for my bad english

[Lonely Raven]

Gun soldering irons ARE NOT FOR SMALL JOBS!

DO NOT USE A BIG GUN ON A GUITAR!

You will melt the insulation right off the pickups! That's bad!

Get yourself a low wattage pencil type solding iron. Even a little 7 watt
is perfectly fine. It might take longer to heat up the objects your soldering,
but that's better then damaging things with the very heat your trying to
use!

Ok, here are some tips. I don't know of any web pages so I'll tell you
some things off the top of my head.

"Tinning" is when you put some solder on the point your going to solder.
IE you Tin the end of wire and the point on the volume pot you're going
to attach it to. This helps you from needing three hands to solder because
when your joining the two points, having the solder already on the points
helps heat them up.

Watch out for "cold solder joints". Cold solder is when you heat up only
one of the two points you are joining, and the solder between the two
points doesn't melt together, but one melts OVER the other. Sure it will
hold for a while, but that's the kind of stuff that fails over time.

Again DON"T OVERHEAT the points your soldering. That will ruin hardware
and wires.

I highly recommend "silver solder" It's got a touch of silver in the mix
and is much stronger, and the good stuff often melts a little bit easier.
It is a bit expensive, but worth it.

I hope that helps out some. And yes, I often wish I had three hands...

[sniperfrommars1]

I use a 15 watt pencil gun for soldering and a 40 watt plumbing iron for removing solder. When soldering you should first REMOVE Old solder with that braided wire, and right off my head im too lazy to go look, but one of my buddys is an electrician and said it was a must. It sucks up solder when heated up and lets you do the hook job darren without worry, as you remove solder when you want to change Also I prefer thin rosin core solder, the thinner the better

[gerca]

hints that can be useful:
When soldering multithreaded wires it might be good to pre-solder the tips of all wires before solder them at places. makes it easie to avoid "cold-soldering".

Also useful to know that it´s quite important that you keep the wire absolutely still after melting into place, so that there will be no "cold-soldering", wich can be hard to find, as you´ll have to heat up every suspicious weldingpoint if you try to pinpoint a bad connection.

When you solder "old" wires, recut them to get fresh metal, as older metal tends to "corrode"...also a way to get a "cold-soldering".
Use the iron at the tip of the wire and hold the solderingwire to it, so you can melt the cleaning stuff right into the wire and not heating it away with the iron :P


Use soldering wire with cleaning media in it!!!

Blah...blah...enough about that :

[trajectory fish]

I'll be installing a Seymour Duncan Jazz 7 in the neck position of my RG 7621 later this week. I've never done anything like this myself, so I'm going to practice by replacing a bad switch in one of my other guitars. The tips you guys have given here should help quite a bit. Are there any specific suggestions for installing the Seymour Duncan in my Ibanez?

Thanks,
Bennett