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I'm looking to re-house an MXR Blue Box my band's bassist gave me the other day (top-mounted jacks are important... as is the obligatory C11 mod), and I was wondering if any of you pedal-wizards had any tips and tricks on how to remove board-mounted jack sockets.

They're an absolute nightmare at the moment, dead fiddly for one person!

Yeah it sucks. This is what I do. Chuck the pcb in a vice of some kind, leaving the jack free. Use a big chisel tip and flood the connector with solder and quickly move your iron between the pads. With any luck it should just drop out ( sometimes it might need a tug from below). Ideally ya need a rework station but yeah...

If you have a spare soldering iron and can borrow someones hand it might be easier too.

I mostly just pry and cry.

Even if you can't get every last little glob out, this will make it easier to manage. If you don't plan on reusing the jacks, cut the pins where they go through the board on the jack side and then you can use some pliers, hemostats, tweezers, or alligator clips to remove the cut tabs from the holes.

Quality desoldering braid will remove almost all of the solder, and leave you with a nice clean pad.

I use Mouser # 577-1811-5F. $3.28 for 5ft. Lasts quite a while.

This stuff is amazing. It works so well that parts sometimes fall right out of the board-- even on double-sided boards.

Mike

Yeah I really really have come to love desoldering braid as well

Flux and Braid.