ShredAstaire Posted February 12, 2011 Author Share Posted February 12, 2011 LOL! I haven't had a chance to go back and try again yet Andy....been a busy weekend so far...i have tomorrow morning/afternoon free and should be able to give it another shot...been studying up on soldering as that is my issue now. Your instructions are great and i think they will help a lot as long as i can solder everything well enough! :) Cheers man! I'll update ya with my progress tomorrow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJScott Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 can anyone confirm that if you leave the soldering iron to long on a pot that the pot can go bad due to, overflow of heat? It is possible, if you have your tip heat too high, but for a ground connection, you need to stay there quite a long time to get the pot warm enough to accept solder. Paste flux is excellent for accelerating the adhesion to a pot case, liquid flux is best for everything else, especially tinning the ends of the wire before installation to the connection. I use a Pace MBT soldering station, digital temp control to 950 degrees. The key is to use the right size tip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 It is possible, if you have your tip heat too high, but for a ground connection, you need to stay there quite a long time to get the pot warm enough to accept solder. Paste flux is excellent for accelerating the adhesion to a pot case, liquid flux is best for everything else, especially tinning the ends of the wire before installation to the connection. I use a Pace MBT soldering station, digital temp control to 950 degrees. The key is to use the right size tip. +1 Shred also has the advantage that there is already solder on the back of the pots. If it is taking a long time to get the existing solder to heat up then your iron is probably not very hot and you don't have to worry too much about screwing up the pots. If the pots are getting hot and the solder is just balling up and rolling off then you are plenty hot and need to sand a spot clean on the back of the pot and use some flux as DJ mentioned. I also clip a small alligator clip or some hemostats to the thin pickup wire to act as a heat sink to help prevent melting the plastic wire coating. Not usually a problem if you have a decent adjustable iron and the right tip as mentioned. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Good luck. Hijack thread time, can anyone confirm that if you leave the soldering iron to long on a pot that the pot can go bad due to, overflow of heat? yes, you can fry a pot. you can heat the lugs to the point that they become loose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 here is another tip not from the audiophile side..the choice solder for audiophile equipment is wbt solder or cardas solder. cardas solder has a melting temp of 180*, and the wbt is close to that if not the same. another tip is rather than wash it with flux, wash it with contact cleaner. the solders i mentioned here are disigned for sound quality as they are made to have a flow that aligns better the grains of the metal-also the high silver content. the idea with the contact cleaner is to elimanate contaminents in the conection. the solder flows so well and has such a low melt temp it is easy to use and make excellent connections. i would.nt not do a project without it, but definitely worth getting some if you plan on soldering often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Here are some good video tutorials for soldering. I would give these a view before you continue further. I think the main thing to remember is to get a good solder flow on each wire and piece before you try to connect them together. That way when you are making the solder joint you are really only heating up the solder to the point it is liquid and letting the pre-soldered pieces fuse together. This prevents you from having to keep the soldering iron on a piece for too long. This is especially good for the thin wire leads as it is easy to get the wire too hot and melt the plastic shield back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo7AKOdAP40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xuo2GWIkl0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 the last two. This guy does a nice job. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRr-7GXrp0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlDTFFMFVXI Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 Man those vids were helpful....soldering is much easier now!! Making decent progress today! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Shred, Glad the videos helped. And yes you are correct on both questions. On # 7 you can just run a little section of wire between the two lugs. Since they would both go to ground it makes no sense to run an individual wire to each lug. Then on 8 you can just connect this to a grounding spot. What I would actually do is just take a section of wire and strip the end long enough to feed it through both lugs and connect the same wire to the back of a pot somewhere. Just remember this about grounding: normally it does not matter where you ground too as long as all the grounds are somehow connected together. Ultimately all the ground points in a guitar have to go to the ground connection on the output jack. So for example just because a diagram says to ground this wire to the back of the volume control doesn't mean you can't ground it to the back of the tone control if it too is connected to ground somehow. Generally everything about where something is grounded in a guitar has more to do with keeping the wiring neat or minimal. Mostly common sense. If you are running a pickup hot lead to a volume control then it makes sense to ground the other wires from that pickup to that same volume control. It's the shortest neatest path. Where you will run into exceptions on this is on some switches and how they or you want them to function. Sometimes you might need to individually control something and if you jumper or ground something to another part of a switch you will be killing the individual control of the switch. Another example of where grounding routes become more critical is inside of amplifiers since there is high voltage and high signal lines, grounding schemes are important to isolate certain sections and route the grounding certain ways to reduce hum and noise in the amp. Hope this helps. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 OK Buddy where's the finished product? I demand satisfaction! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 18, 2011 Author Share Posted February 18, 2011 Uh yeah...about that. Check your PM's bro... :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MojoRedFoot Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Uh yeah...about that. Check your PM's bro... :( Oh nooo....waht happened? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 18, 2011 Author Share Posted February 18, 2011 Well...in short, Shred took on something a bit too complicated for his first hand at guitar electronics. Maybe I am not cut out for it at all, but I will try again on my cheaper, less awesome Ibanez guitar. I'll start with something simpler though. My brain just did not get what was happening, and my hands weren't co operating either...i burned many wires and stripped them poorly. I should have practiced before getting in my SG. She's in good hands now and i decided to replace ALL electronics...she's gonna sound amazing...i'm sad, but happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimbabig Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Well...in short, Shred took on something a bit too complicated for his first hand at guitar electronics. Maybe I am not cut out for it at all, but I will try again on my cheaper, less awesome Ibanez guitar. I'll start with something simpler though. My brain just did not get what was happening, and my hands weren't co operating either...i burned many wires and stripped them poorly. I should have practiced before getting in my SG. She's in good hands now and i decided to replace ALL electronics...she's gonna sound amazing...i'm sad, but happy. Hey Shred, when you strip a wire, just take a lighter to the end of it and melt it some, then pull it off with your fingers, you won't get burned, I promise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 18, 2011 Author Share Posted February 18, 2011 Hey Shred, when you strip a wire, just take a lighter to the end of it and melt it some, then pull it off with your fingers, you won't get burned, I promise. Good tip - thank ya! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimbabig Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Good tip - thank ya! No problem, it saves a lot of time ****ing aroung with those strippers (no pun intended) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy R Posted February 19, 2011 Share Posted February 19, 2011 Uh yeah...about that. Check your PM's bro... :( Hmmm no PM's.?? Oh well don't be discouraged and don't give up. As you can see by my rebuild thread that everything is a learning process. Soldering just takes a little practice. It also helps to have a good temperature controlled iron to work with like a Weller. Don't give up man my first "Soldering jobs" were pretty ugly. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShredAstaire Posted February 19, 2011 Author Share Posted February 19, 2011 I won't give up...i'm gonna try again on a guitar that I like less...hehehe an Ibanez GAX75.... But also, i sent you a long *** PM! You didnt get it? I'll copy it and resend just so ya have it...lol! MAN! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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