Thanks brotherdave i'll check this out, good stuff

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Your post just describes how valuable these skills are. Also the sense of self satisfaction you gain as you turn a bad situation around. Not to mention if you have soldering skills then you can do your own pickup swaps and stuff like that. It's a really important thing in my eyes, in order to not be at the guitar repair person's workbench all the time if something needs looking at.

That gas powered iron sounds like a must have if you're gigging, or with a band that's gigging, because these breakdowns do happen. It's like the situation where you have something on hand and don't use it all the time but man when a breakdown does occur it literally saves the day and you're so glad you had it with you!

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I have a 30-watt iron from Radio Shack. I can replace the tips whenever I need and the 640 degree temp rating works perfect for me for wiring up guitars.

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Check out my new FB music page!

https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilandMe.Music

I use an old Weller soldering gun that I've owned for about 40 years but one of these days I'm going to have to invest in a quality dual Wattage iron,they're way more manageable and practicle.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Well, I just used my soldering iron. I had an old broken amp, in which the transformer blew up (the amp itself is only $70, the repair would probably cost more than a new amp anyway) So I tried to make it into a 1x8 extension for my Peavey. I failed

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Hey Buxom, it was a cheap amp anyway so no harm done, at least you gave it a go, how'd the iron work? that was the vintage one you had wasn't it?

Interesting that quite a lot of the guys seem to have the straight plug into the wall variety irons instead of the kinda deluxe temperature controlled things that are expensive.

The thing is, for me the really expensive one would not be justifiable as i only do things like occasional amp maintenance soldering caps in or resistors.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I also got the amp for free when my neighbor found it in his attic.

Yea, it was that vintage one. It did the job well, although it really smokes quite a bit. I had just cleaned it too. Basically, i'll probably end up buying another jack and some fresh wires and keep trying. I slipped a couple times and ended up soldering my hands in some areas. It doesn't hurt, so no harm done.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

I did a mod on a Boss DS1 distortion pedal replacing a couple of Diodes and Resistors recently. Anyway the hardest thing is seeing really well and close up to the work so that everything's clear. In the guts of the pedal those components are so tiny it's really hard to see. To see the color coding for the resistors i use one of those jewellers loupe things that they use for looking at tiny little hallmarks on pieces. Anyway the experiment worked and the pedal sounds better than the typical ratty DS1 sound, it adds more mids and bass and gives it some extra body. This is the site where i learnt about the mod; it's the second one under DS1 i did not the first.

http://www.erikhansen.net/pedalmods.php

For working on tiny components you need some kind of magnification, unless you've got eyes like a hawk.

I did the same thing as you, i had one of those tiny little toy Marshalls that resembles a tiny little stack, it's a battery thing, a toy more than anything else. I mucked around with things in that and ruined it basically I was just experimenting around with it. It's good to use cheap stuff like that to experiment with so if you mess up it doesn't matter anyway.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I've got one of those little Marshalls. It's got gain that sounds like it could do some damage if you hook up an OD pedal.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Yeah i took it all apart 'cos i wanted to see what it looked like inside and then i had an urge to practice some soldering and mucking around on it They're not really designed for anything like that, if something go's wrong in it you wouldn't take it to an amp repair man think you'd just sling it in the bin.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

You could take it there as a joke. Like bring it in a giant cab, then tell them that you need something on the inside repaired.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Yeah take it in and say "i want a mod done on my Marshall amp" put in another channel!!!

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

No, say "Put in a spring reverb!"

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

^^^

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I have a Weller 8200 N gun. I have no clue how old it is, but I suspect it's older than 1980.