Bearing in mind i only work on my own amps; do you guys think it's worth it to spend extra on a temp adjustable solder station or would you use a non adjustable iron for occasional work?

To me it seems like hard to justify getting the station for occasional only work but IDK i can't really make my mind up because they say it's much easier to work with the adjustable one's.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

If you intend to work on any modern amps with PCB's, a soldering station with adjustable thermal control is a must. It doesn't take much to lift the traces off these cheaply-made boards or incinerate a circuit run altogether if you assume a ham-handed soldering philosophy.

JMOOC......

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Buy the temp. control. I'm in the engineering dept. at my job, my philosiphy has always been, buy the best tool you can afford.

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"Where would rock and roll be without feedback?"

Yeah it's very easy to lift a trace. i lifted the very corner off one but it went back down again when i replaced the cap. I was checking coupling caps for DC leakage on to the next stage and measuring it.

Anyway on removing the side opposite the plate side in order to test it, the cap was really tight to the board and hard to get out so i had to heat it a couple of times

Anyway i think i'll take your advice and get a temp adjustable one.

Begs the question what are these plug straight in the wall irons good for?

Here's another one for you techs: what do you do if you lift a trace? can it be repaired? i've seen a few solutions but don't know if any work. There's that pen thing that dispenses an electro-conductive trace. Don't know if that's a good solution or not for any PCB problems.

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

+YES+

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2012 Lefty American Standard Jazz
2017 Lefty American Professional Precision
2018 Rumble Studio 40 Combo
2016 Rumble 200 Combo
One day they shall name a GREAT city after me, and they shall call it LINNINGRAD

Soldering ground wires to trem claws and amp chassis's.

I use a biggasshonkin' 100-watt iron for tasks such as that.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Is this in answer to the fixing of a trace linnin? what would you do use one of those pens to fix it?

How come on some boards you see the traces are thin copper things whereas on my Marshall they're silver foil?

How is that foil attached? is it just glued on to the boards surface?

Where can you buy that foil stuff if you ever needed it? My amps fine there's nothing loose on any of the traces apart from that tiny little bit but this would be good to know just in case

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

I used a 25 watt Weller with a cone tip and a 40 watt Weller with a narrow chisel tip/wide chisel tip to build my Weber 5F6A Bassman clone with no problems at all. 25 watt with cone tip for general soldering, 40 watt Weller with narrow chisel tip for soldering to back of a pot, and the same 40 watt Weller with a wide chisel tip to solder heavy ground wires to the brass ground plane.

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Bill

The correct answer is duct tape!

As always, this is merely IMO where YMMV.

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You dig?

That's some great work there on those amps. Real top class stuff and incredibly neat.

Were your two irons non adjustable though or do they have adjustment for temp?

I have a Weller too, it's a 25 Watt one the SP25L model. It's a pretty good iron but i was wanting to hear from someone like you Bluesky, someone who can do this with a regular iron. Nice to know it can be done

Basically all i'm gonna be doing is replacing all the coupling caps in the amp with Mallory 150's 0.02uF's. Then i probably won't be doing any more for ages that's why i was wondering if i should just use my Weller 25.

Congrats on your work it's first class.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Thanks.

Yes, both irons are non-adjustible. I learned how to solder when I worked for a small electronics company during the summer while in college back in the early 70s. None of our irons were temperature adjustible on the assembly floor.

Here is the complete thread on my amp build. Built with just those two irons used as described.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=65668

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Bill

I use a Weller that's 5 to 40 watts and cost about 40 dollars also a Portasol gas iron and a home made ventilation system.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

hi gary , i use one of maplins adjustabe solder stations , had it for years and it''s never let me down

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Cheers bluesky. Yeah you must have really good soldering technique. The non adjustable's are harder to work with i think and are not so forgiving of any poor technique. But i often wondered about that; what did folks do back in the day when they never had temp adjusts.

I didn't know that thread was up here thanks for posting it, i'll go through it all see if i can pick up any tips.

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Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.

Hi Alan, what model is it? i'll see if they still have it

I would use the Weller iron i have, the plug straight in one with no adjustment but the PCB is the problem. It's really easy to overheat them if you're not careful with the non adjustable iron and you can lift a trace up easily.

I was looking on Amazon at the price of some of these solder stations Some of them are over £1,000 what will it solder itself while i watch Wonder why they're so expensive? That's the ultra high end of the market though. There are some nice looking one's around the £40 £50 mark and above.

_________________
Luck won't do it and ignorance can't

George Van Eps.