hey how you doing I'm Mike today we're
going to talk about soldering if you
like to make music with anything that
has a cable attached to it like a guitar
or a mic or an audio interface basically
anything that's got a hole to stick a
cable in you're going to want to know
about soldering well why do you want to
know about stuttering for starters it's
a lot cheaper to make your own cables
and to fix your own cables than it is to
go out to the store and buy them but
more importantly it gives you more
concrete understanding of the different
types of connections that you're working
with and the different types of signals
that you're working with so why don't we
take a look at some of the tools that
you're going to need if you want to
solder here we've got our vice and this
is useful for holding your connectors
and your cables while you're soldering
and it's very good if you want to keep
from burning yourself some of you might
be into that but I'm not so I'm going to
use a vice then you have your blades
which you use for stripping back backing
on your
cables here we've got strippers these
guys are sometimes known as te-
strippers or just strippers this is
called a mini strip axe this is what I
prefer to use because it's quicker and
it's easier to get the job done but they
both perform the same task so whichever
one you have will work just
fine here we have our soldering iron and
our base station it's important that you
have a good soldering iron for a couple
of reasons first a good soldering iron
has a good tip on it it which is what
you're using when you work also a good
soldering iron will work at the proper
temperature and maintain that
temperature the entire time you're
working so you'll have an easier time
while you're soldering and you'll have
stronger
connections and last but not least Rosen
cor
solder today we're going to talk about
guitar cables because those are some of
the most common cables that you work
with and also there's some of the
simplest when it comes to soldering so
first I'm going to show you an example
of a bad soldering job then I'm going to
show you an example of a good soldering
job and explain to you how to do
it so here's an example of a poor
soldering job I could see at least five
things that went wrong in this scenario
for starters let's note that on a
quarter-inch guitar cable you've got two
conductors the hot conductor up on top
here and the shield conductor down on
the
bottom the first thing I notice is that
the hot conductor is supposed to have a
non-conductive jacketing that protects
it in this case somebody has stripped
the conductor so far back that the ENT
enre length of the wire in the connector
is exposed this can lead to shorting and
corrosion down the road so this cable
won't last you very long the second
thing I notice here is that the shield
conductor is not making proper contact
with the sleeve of the connector that's
pretty
self-explanatory it's also very well
exposed in the same way that the hot
conductor is and they're getting
dangerously close to touching each other
so another thing I notice over here is
that there's a giant mound of solder
where somebody tried to attach The
Shield this is a common mistake that
people make when they're first learning
how to solder because they think that
the more solder they put on the better
that's not necessarily true and in this
case it's actually detrimental because
you'll see the mound is so big that it's
actually coming close to touching our
other conductor up here another problem
I see here is that the hot conductor has
what we call a cold solder joint you can
see that the solder here is not as
smooth or as shiny as a solder that we
have down here what that tells me is
that while this solder was drying the
conductor was either moving or shaking
and that leaves you with a weak solder
point so somewhere down the line that
conductor is going to come off the pin
and you're going to lose your signal the
other major problem I see here is that
our strain relief isn't properly clamped
down that leaves nothing to stop the
force of an angry guitar player yanking
on the cable and possibly breaking off
your solder
points and by the way whoever soldered
this reversed the hot and the shield so
you could see here the hot is actually
soldered to the sleeve and the sh Feld
is actually slided to the tip where it's
supposed to be the other way around you
could tell because you could see the
jacket sticking out on the hot
conductor now that I showed you why this
sucks I'm going to chop it and show you
how to do it
right here's a tip for you anybody who's
ever sided anything could probably tell
you that they've made this mistake more
times that they could even count before
you even think about prepping your cable
take your back shell and put it on
otherwise you're going to hate yourself
after you solder it and realize it's too
late so the first thing we need to do is
strip back the jacketing on our cable if
I look at my connector here I've got a
strain relief and I've got my two solder
points I need to find a strip back that
can clamp this strain relief down on the
jacketing but can also leave enough room
for my cables to have some play so I can
get them where they need to go on the
connector the blade is a very convenient
measuring tool in this case if I look at
the blade next to the connector I see
that this line here is almost the
perfect measure for how far back I want
to strip my
cable so now to strip back my jacket I'm
going to hold my cable up to the line
that I measured and I'm going to use my
Razor to cut through the jacket I don't
want to press too hard so that I cut
through the strands but I want to press
hard enough that I can get through the
jacketing so this is what we should get
after we strip back our jacket notice
that none of the shield wires have been
cut so the next step here is to twist
The Shield wires into one conductor so
we take them all here bring them all
together and twist
them so now I've got to strip back a
little bit of my hot conductor so that I
can solder it to the connector but
remember I don't want to strip it back
any farther than I need to because that
leaves the wire exposed and susceptible
to things like
shorting to do so I'm going to use my
strip
axe so this leaves me with a little bit
of the hot wire exposed to solder to my
my connector now I'm going to Tin my
wires tinning is when you put a little
bit of solder on them to get them
prepared first make sure that you got a
nice clean tip on your soldering iron
it'll make your job a hell of a lot
easier so now you want to remember that
you only need a little bit of solder on
your conductors
okay so now that we've tined our wires
we also need to Tin our
connector this connector's already got
some solder on it because it was
previously used so what I'm going to do
is just reheat the solder a little bit
and put some new solder on it to freshen
it
up so now we're going to take the wires
and solder them
on we put everything in place so that
all you have to do is hit it briefly
with the soldering iron and everything
will be
good and there we have
it so now all we have to do is clamp
down the strain relief I'm going to use
my t- strips here to do it make sure we
have a nice tight grasp
now it can't be pulled
out all right that's a clean solder
everything is making a full connection
where it's supposed to be we don't have
too much solder on everything The Strain
relief is clamped down holding
everything in place and there's no
exposed wire where there shouldn't be
this is going to last you a while now
the last thing we have to do is put the
backshell on we just got to screw it
on and there you have it so now you
should be able to understand some of the
basics of soldering you should be able
to distinguish a good solder from a bad
solder and you should be well on your
way to making all your own cables
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