Re: How hard is it to do pickups?
My two peneth, from combined research :
- Most of the components are pretty hardy when it comes to heating, but careful with terminals on pots as the pots are probably the most sensitve (don't worry about the shells though, they can take more prolonged heat fine)
- You could use a crocidile clip as a heat sink between the part ur soldering and the rest of the pot, to divert some of the heat, but I found it pretty easy on my first time round to just touch the terminals for a few seconds and solder.
- Looks for nice round shiny solder joints; if they are grey and lumpy, they are probably 'dry' (or is it 'cold' ?) solder joints, which aren't ideal - they'll probably still work, but if you're a perfectionist, shiny and smooth is best (althought the resin core will dull the solder to some extent)
- Use resin (or rosin, same thing different spelling depending on where you live) core solder, of reasonably narrow diameter - i.e. use electrical solder, not jewelerry solder! Have heard of that mistake before. You could buy electrical solder without the resin core, and buy resin seperatly to add to taste but I don't believe that's general practice, more of a perfectionists touch.
- good tip is to 'tin' the wire and componant - i.e. coat the wire and componant with solder, this helps the join 'take' better when you actually solder them together
-As I think someone said before, the best technique is to heat the wire + componant together, and feed the solder in, as opposed to melting solder on the actual iron, and dropping it on a cold wire + componant - this is a big cause of the affore mentioned 'dry' solder joints and also leads you to using more solder than needed. With a bit of practice you'll get the hang of it..this way also generally helps you use less solder
- Wattage of the soldering iron seems to be personal taste; a hotter one will heat the wire + componants (thus the solder) quicker so means you have to keep the heat on for less time, but the increaced heat could damage componants. In general I've always thought it better to have stronger heat for less time, but of course not to an excess - 30 to 40W is the happiest medium I think. And more and the strenght of heat may be damaging even for a short time, and any less and you have to keep the iron there for longer, and the heat is conducted further before the terminals / wire heats where you need it.
- Don't have impressionable young people in the room while you solder, as the first time you burn yourself with a 30/40W soldering iron, you'll probably spout words even you didn't realise you know.
For PUP installation, it's all straightforward, as long as you know which wires are which and have spent a bit of time working out what needs to be wired where - when you open it up, spend a few minutes making sure you're totally familiar, then you'll be confident and can do the job quickly :bigthumb:
