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WTB pot(s)! To help me learn that there solderin’!
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The time has come to learn how to solder! I’ve been a bit ‘all the gear, no idea’ up til now! Got a decent soldering iron and all the extras, but I buy pickups and have to get other people to put them in for me!
So I have about half a dozen guitars that I want to mod/build, which means I need a fair few pots! But before I go and spend a fiver a piece on some decent new pots which I may well destroy in the (learning) process, has anyone got some tatty old ones they don’t want that I could purchase and practice on?
Thanking you!
Comments
...then I fried a CTS pot a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere. Bad luck? Particular placement of joint? Broken to start with? Who knows
I can mail you no end of cheap pots, taken from guitars that I have upgraded or repaired. These range from looking good as new to being so smothered in solder as to obliterate the markings in the casings.
Nowadays, not all CTS components are created equal. The ones sold in Fender accessory packs are the cheapest Taiwanese version.
So far, DiMarzio Pro Parts and Six String Supplies posh versions are of the standard that people my age expect.
Alpha > CTS these days IMHO. If something fails (which is always a CTS!) it gets replaced by a full size Alpha.
It's harder and more likely to damage the pot. To do it well requires more effort and a more powerful iron with a bigger tip.
Just use a solder lug washer, or a loop of solid core wire screwed into the side of the cavity wall.
I'm not saying don't practice, I'm saying don't practice doing it the hard way.
It's a pointless thing to do. Ground the pots case by all means but don't bother smothering it in solder and trying to common earth everything on top of it.
It's another pointless thing that's still done now because that's how they did it back in the day. Like putting reverse biased diodes to ground on the DC input of pedals or wiring up footswitches in a manner they are more likely to fail
A good practice technique is take a piece of solid core wire and cut in into 12 pieces of one inch lengths. Then solder it together in the shape of a cube.
I think all you really need is:
- Thin solder - I like the lead-free stuff, but leaded is easier. Thin is the most important thing for ease of use.
- Clean the tip regularly - the brass shavings wipers are better than a wet sponge.
- A bit of tip conditioner is no bad thing.
- Don't keep using a worn-out tip - it takes a while, but they do eventually stop being good.
- Make sure the things you are soldering are also clean.
- Make a good mechanical joint - solder isn't meant to glue things, it just improves the connection.
- Stranded wires should be tinned before soldering (ie heat them up and flow a little solder onto them - you should still be able to see the strands, not a big glob of solder).
- Apply the iron, then apply the solder to the joint (with the iron still in place), then remove both.
- A good solder joint takes no more than three seconds.
There are others here with more soldering experience than me, but I've done tens of thousands of joints and first learned when I was about five (a stylophone kit!).The obsession with cleaning everything is, though, admirable. If you build stuff like it's going into space and people might die, usuallly neither happens.