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I finally got over my fear of soldering.

I was fiddling around with my guitar when the sound suddenly went dead. Somehow the input jack AND the nut had manage to retract through the plate. I took a look inside and it was indeed snapped.

Now there are two guys I could have gotten to do this, but one lives far away, and I'm not sure if I should go to the other one, was meant to be jamming with him but didn't work out. So I thought fff what am I going to do.

I decided since it was something simple I'd just get a soldering iron myself and give it a go.

It took me a while to figure out how to use it. I did make a bit of a mess, clumps if it everywhere, burnt away a lot of the outside of the wire, but eventually mananged to squelch it all together into a coherent soldery whole. Of course since i had a solid solder connection poking out now it was a little hard to get it back into the body, but it worked out, and what do you know, plugged it right in and my Tele was working again.

It was a great feeling. I then went to look for other things to solder, and couldn't find anything. That kind of sucked. But at least now if I need pickups wiring or an input jack fixed I can do that myself.

Any other suggestions? I can probably do mods now.

My soldering is a bit messy though, I dunno. It seems the tip of the iron never heats up either for whatever reason I have to use the side further down to heat things up. Okay for doing jacks and stuff but for intricate work no way. Should I get a smaller soldering iron for putting together kits?

i love soldering in theory, but none of the 3 kits i've attempted to build have worked (2 of them came with messed up circuit boards )
been sticking to mod kits instead.

You'll get the hang of it, just takes awhile and practice.

Don't know the wattage of your iron, but one that isn't hot enough is harder to work with than one that is too hot.

MM

Yea you'll want atleast a 35 watt needle tip iron (about £5 on ebay I paid for mine and it's made me countless pedal) but a higher wattage is good, fat ends aren't so good for intricate jobs and as metal says, a low wattage will make it harder.

If you need any help chuck me a PM and I should be able to give you tips/ advice, i'm not the be all of end all but I have a fairly good idea.

If you can get hold of it you can practice on a piece of vero/strip board or perf, just sticking random wires in then getting the cleanest joint you can (and trust me after 10 minutes, they'll be nice and clean) and then you can move on to other soldering jobs, but the iron is key also the type of solder (I hate unleaded, but in England leaded is hard to come by and possibly illegal, but I have my small stash...)