So, your "tech" needs to be told how to wire your guitar, and he does soldering like THAT?! Looks like he also needs to be taught how to solder as well. You'd be better off having your 10 year old neighbor kid doing it for you...after you get your money back from that "tech".
59/Custom Hybrid splitting the “wrong” side
- Thread starter tonefordayz
- Start date
ThreeChordWonder
New member
Sorry to pile on the insults to your tech, but your clue should have been when he asked you to provide a wiring diagram. That push pull doesn't even look like my lousy scrambled egg soldering, he's put a whole omelette on there!
tonefordayz
New member
I swear to God, every time I leave an instrument in the hands of one of these "techs" (even worse, usually, like this one, supposedly a "luthier"), said instrument needs to go through the hands of other 2 or 3 of them until I can get something simple done right.
I don't know if this is a particularly bad problem here in Brazil or if all around the world is the same, but it almost seems that these people are always no good for nothing quacks that just decide one day they will call themselves "luthiers" and since there is no regulation on the profession whatsoever, any idiot can claim to be even not possessing even knowledge to do the most basic things.
I have about 7 electrics now and it's just a pain in the ass living in a small town like this. I have o lot of other stuff to do and would preffer to just pay someone to do this kind of stuff to me, but it's becoming more and more difficult, since finding a professional I can trust is proving itself everytime harder and harder.
Guess I'll have to just do the course on pickup installation that SD offers and see where I can go from there.
Wish me luck, gentleman.
I don't know if this is a particularly bad problem here in Brazil or if all around the world is the same, but it almost seems that these people are always no good for nothing quacks that just decide one day they will call themselves "luthiers" and since there is no regulation on the profession whatsoever, any idiot can claim to be even not possessing even knowledge to do the most basic things.
I have about 7 electrics now and it's just a pain in the ass living in a small town like this. I have o lot of other stuff to do and would preffer to just pay someone to do this kind of stuff to me, but it's becoming more and more difficult, since finding a professional I can trust is proving itself everytime harder and harder.
Guess I'll have to just do the course on pickup installation that SD offers and see where I can go from there.
Wish me luck, gentleman.
ThreeChordWonder
New member
Get some old or cheap pots from eBay and practice your soldering. Plenty of youtube videos out there to watch, but the top tips seem to be:
- Use a soldering iron of at least 60 watts
- Use a pointed tip for the small connections like onto push-pulls or pot lugs, but use a chisel tip (like a flat screwdriver tip) for soldering wires to pot casings
- Keep your solder tip clean at all times
- Clean up / roughen up where you solder to pot casings with a little sandpaper, wet and dry, or similar before soldering
- Use 63/37 solder if you can get it, 60/40 if not but make sure its rosin cored electrical solder not pipe solder
- If you want to add a little solder flux from a pen (like a glue pen but with solder flux) before soldering - it won't hurt
- Pre-tin the ends of your wires - that means putting solder onto the ends of the wires before you solder them to the pot
- Remember you only need just enough solder to make the joint electrically, extra solder adds nothing
- Buy a multimeter and use it to check continuity as you make every single solder connection - buy a digital multimeter, most have a beeper, usually on the lowest ohms setting, that beeps when the connection is good
- Practice practice practice!
I'd recommend the course, and you'll feel better being more self-sufficient, at least with wiring.
+10!!
Excellent!
The only thing I'd add is to heat the pot back first with the iron to get it hot enough to melt the solder, then let the solder flow onto it. Do NOT heat the solder and let it drip onto the metal (which apparently your "tech" did).
Tonefordayz's pictures are a great example of how NOT to solder.
ThreeChordWonder
New member
^Yes. Always heat the object then apply the end of the solder wire to the object not the soldering iron, but don't think you have to heat the whole pot up to soldering temperature - you'll cook the insides.
Wound_Up
New member
I use a 260w Weller gun on mine. Makes things much, much simpler and quicker. Hit the pot, get it hot quick, and hit it with solder. Instead of having to wait 20 seconds for it to heat up and possibly burning up the pot, you get in and out quickly.
And no, it will not degauss your pickups. I've been in my guitars countless times and NEVER degaussed any of them.
I used to use one of those Weller guns. It worked fine, but it was too clumsy/bulky. If you're not doing any "fancy" wiring and there's not much going on in the control cavity (like maybe only a toggle and a vol pot), you shouldn't have any problems. But once you get lots of controls and switches and lots of wire, there's no room to fit that solder gun too.
ThreeChordWonder
New member
I have a Weller "ray gun" iron as well. I only use it for pot casings though, too cumbersome for most other things.:beerchug:
