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How many of you do your own electrical work?

#41
Citizen Snips said:
Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I will practice on my old dean with mile high action that fell apart by itself. What I don't know about is caps (I've never read into it). Are there caps that aren't applicable to electric instruments? What kind should I be looking for?
Click to expand...

There are two kinds of caps you don't want to use in your guitar: tantalum and electrolytic. Most others are fair game. I like the mylar film 'chiclet' ones for guitar use. You can get them easily from Radioshack. Standard values are .022 uF (22 nF), .047 uF (47 nF), and .1 uF (100 nF). The higher the value the more high frequencies it cuts in a tone circuit.
 
#42
I do all my own electrical work myself. Been doing it since 1967 when I built my first amplifier. From my perspective its easy coming from a old fossil with half a century of experience. I recommend you do it. But keep in mind you may need help at some point and undoing anything you did will not amount to much (except burning down the house and I have confidence that your smart enough to avoid that).

No one here has mentioned tinning. An essential ingredient for soldiering skills. You need to keep the iron tip tinned. As well as tinning all the parts you are soldiering.

No one here has mentioned heat transfer. An essential ingredient for soldiering skills. You need to heat the right spot to get the soldier to "flow" where you want it.

Do you know what a cold soldier looks like? Can you spot a hair line crack in a soldier joint?

If you get it wrong, a soldier sucker can clean up the "mess" to get started over. It takes lots of practice so the sooner you start the sooner you'll get good at it. I recommend doing it yourself over and over until your frustrated then call Munji for tips on "where did I go wrong".

I know and work with lots of 4 year degree electrical engineers that can not soldier. But with that said learning to soldier is easier than learning to playing a musical instrument.

Once you have some soldiering skills, changing pups, jacks, caps, pots are a piece of cake. You'll start looking for challenges like reading schematics, fixing pa equipment etc.

Keep us informed on your progress.
 
#43
I do my electrics, and I've repaired or upgraded a few of my friends' instruments. I hope to move onto changing electronics soon and making my own.

Meanwhile, I went from an ancient and rather ungainly 60W "screwdriver-tip" soldering pen with to a smaller 50W soldering station that I picked up for ~USD30. It's cheap, but it works well.

Citizen Snips said:
Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I will practice on my old dean with mile high action that fell apart by itself. What I don't know about is caps (I've never read into it). Are there caps that aren't applicable to electric instruments? What kind should I be looking for?
Click to expand...

As Derek said above, avoid tantalums and electrolyticals because they are polarized. Polarized capacitors are mostly used in direct current (DC) circuits, where you have a signal that's always positive or always negative. In a bass, when you pluck a string, it goes up and down and up and down, and the pickup gives out a signal which goes positive-negative-positive-negative, so it's an alternating current circuit (AC)

Read more about it Invalid Link Removed and Invalid Link Removed, and look at Invalid Link Removed for a visual guide on how each type looks. To learn how to read a cap's value from the markings, see here

I'm sorry if I'm repeating things you already know, I just hope to provide a clear picture. :D
 
#44
Im actually in the middle of doing my own right now. I take a "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" stance to things, usually. When I pulled up the cover to look inside it when I first bought it, just for interest. One of the pickups, I know realize, was entirely disconnected. after an accident that pulled the stem out with the knob on the blend pot, despite completely removing the screw from the knob, I had to pull the pot out, and that's when I saw that half the wires weren't connected where they should've been.

I don't even understand how it could've been working, to be honest. I'm certain at least one wire broke off, the grounding lines were badly soldered together, none of it followed the electrical diagram from ibanez sr305, there was a lot of slop, etc. Tons of wires were crossing over each other, making working more difficult. It's a project for me to learn how to redo this stuff properly so it fits the diagram and logic, and prevents the wires from hanging up on each other. Who knows, it'll probably sound better when I'm done, because both the pickups might not have been working at the same time. I disconnected and rerouted wires that make sense in terms of current and future use needs, and now I just wait for the pot to finish it and test it out.
 
#45
I've always done my own, but in the last few years I have gotten to be real good buddies with a guy who owns a music store near here. I just take it to him now. Half the time he doesn't charge me anything. He did a nut for me on my guitarists Les Paul. Did a perfect job, charged me 8 bucks.
 
#46
I do my own wiring. My dad was a ham radio operator and he taught me to solder about the time I was old enough to hold the iron. I also do my own setups and most repair work, although I draw the line at refrets and pay somebody else to have that kind of fun.

The pickier you become about how your instrument plays and feels, the more you'll appreciate being able to do your own work and get it perfect for your playing with your hands. Learning to solder is a great place to start.
 
#48
I learned about this stuff on a fairly rudimentary level by wathcing my Dad (an electronics engineer) working on family TVs and radios. I can do very basic soldering and repairs. Fortunately for me, guitar and bass electornics in general are fairly simple to work on.
 
#50
I do my own...put together a couple of parts bases with atypical switching configurations, and made several wiring mods to an L2K.

My dad is a service engineer (well, now retired) and spent a lot of time soldering things, and he taught me the basics. I improved my skills, and learned much more about design of circuits in my electronics class in grad school.

It's a good skill to have...if something breaks, you can have it fixed in half an hour instead of a few days, you can communicate with techs in their own language, you can play around wit your own customized configurations, and you get a much better idea of what possibilities are out there.
 
#51
I do all my own basic stuff and have for many years. I have replaced numerous pots, pickups, capacitors, etc in basses and guitars. For more complicated stuff I have a brother in-law who is an electrical engineer. He has a complete shop in his basement and doesn't charge me anything!
 
#52
JimmyM said:
...other times I just botch the crap out of it. I've been told I need to get a better soldering iron, though, and after using a really nice one recently, I believe it.
Click to expand...

Yeah a decent tip on your iron does make a huge difference. When I was starting out I accidentally left my iron on for a while and cooked the tip. From that point on it was useless, but I didn't know this and just thought I sucked. I'd check out vids and wonder how these guys made it look so easy. When I bought a new iron it made sense.
 
#53
vin*tone said:
Yeah a decent tip on your iron does make a huge difference. When I was starting out I accidentally left my iron on for a while and cooked the tip. From that point on it was useless, but I didn't know this and just thought I sucked. I'd check out vids and wonder how these guys made it look so easy. When I bought a new iron it made sense.
Click to expand...

My iron is on a timer for this reason.
 
#55
It takes a little time and practice to get good at it. If you have friend with those skills have him show you the techniques involved. There's a proper way to do it and there's an improper way to do it and James Judson covered most of that in his post.

You may fry a pot or a switch while you're learning like some of us have but that's all part of the process of learning to do it correctly. Give yourself a rating as you do a few. Like on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being perfect and 1 being it looks liked The Tin Man upchucked in your control cavity. :p LOL

The closer you can get to 10 the better. :D
 
#56
Caps is caps - unless you're talking about the old GI-Can electrolytic types and they aren't for the insides of a guitar anyway.

800px-PaperElectrolyticCapacitors.jpg


Don't fall for the Orange Drops - they are just a total rip off!

Use these or some just like them from Radio Shack:::

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Notice the price too.
 
#57
Citizen Snips said:
Well, one of my basses needs a volume pot replacement and I was looking for a decent welding kit. Then I realized that taking it to a repair shop would be cheaper. Taking into account that I'm broke and that I don't know how to do electrical work, would this be a good decision? I would like to learn eventually, but I'm broke right now and I just want to get my bass fixed ASAP.

So, how many of you do your own electrical work (for your instruments)? Is it difficult?
Click to expand...

I have rewired dozens of basses and a few guitars. It is not Rocket Science
 
#58
I do my own electronics...recently built a custom P bass and did all the wiring myself as well. Make sure you get some practice with a good soldering iron (I have a Weller that is GREAT! It was only about $25 at Lowes), which can be something as basic as soldering wire onto pieces of metal. You can also try by soldering exposed copper wiring together. You don't NEED to, but some clamp stands help a lot when it's small, delicate work like this. On a speaker install it's not useful, but the wiring for pots and pickups is pretty thin...it'll help if you are a novice at soldering.
 
#59
Thecomedian said:
I always thought irons had internal "coffee pot" heat sensors that turn the elements off. How long does it take to burn up a tip? I knew a guy that built a rig that could vary the current with a knob, and two switching to put it to 120 full and 90 or 60 after it heated up.
Click to expand...

One place I worked had temperature controlled Wellers running 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. The tips lasted almost forever
unless damaged. A temperature controlled iron will have a relatively low temperature while idling in the iron holder. The heat
output to the tip doesn't increase until the work begins drawing heat away from the tip. Back in the holder, the heat output drops
way off again.

The problem with tip burning is mainly with fixed output irons and variable heat irons which are left on high heat. These irons
are unregulated, and when thay have enough heat to bring the work up to soldering temperature, they will also have too much
heat to sit there idling. That excess heat translates into excess temperature. The tip burns.

With a variable heat iron, you can avoid this by turning down the heat while it is idling. But then you have to wait for it to reheat
in order to use it. True temperature control and regulation are a real advantage.

Also, you want a high enough temperature to get the solder joint made quickly. Using too little heat can cause more damage
by taking too long to make a good solder connection. It should only take a few seconds to make a connection.

The longest lasting tips are iron clad. The copper tips will dissolve away as the flux continuously removes the oxidizing copper.
You also have to be careful not to damage the iron plate and expose the base metal. But that normally should not happen.
 
#60
megafiddle said:
One place I worked had temperature controlled Wellers running 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. The tips lasted almost forever
unless damaged. A temperature controlled iron will have a relatively low temperature while idling in the iron holder. The heat
output to the tip doesn't increase until the work begins drawing heat away from the tip. Back in the holder, the heat output drops
way off again.

The problem with tip burning is mainly with fixed output irons and variable heat irons which are left on high heat. These irons
are unregulated, and when thay have enough heat to bring the work up to soldering temperature, they will also have too much
heat to sit there idling. That excess heat translates into excess temperature. The tip burns.

With a variable heat iron, you can avoid this by turning down the heat while it is idling. But then you have to wait for it to reheat
in order to use it. True temperature control and regulation are a real advantage.

Also, you want a high enough temperature to get the solder joint made quickly. Using too little heat can cause more damage
by taking too long to make a good solder connection. It should only take a few seconds to make a connection.

The longest lasting tips are iron clad. The copper tips will dissolve away as the flux continuously removes the oxidizing copper.
You also have to be careful not to damage the iron plate and expose the base metal. But that normally should not happen.
Click to expand...

+1 on all counts. This is great advice.

--Silvie
 

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