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Weird Problem - Solder Won't Melt

#21
Sounds like your iron tip is fried. I had an iron like this - I accidentally left it switched on and the coating on the tip disappeared. I did all the cleaning and retinning tricks mentioned above and it kinda worked but ..... just forget it. Get a new tip or iron and take good care of it. All of a sudden soldering becomes a whole lot easier.
 
#22
First off a 45 watt iron is what I've used for working on guitars which has always melted solder quickly so I don't overheat a component. Also don't bother with desoldering braid... a desoldering bulb with a teflon tip is the way to go. Lastly, keep a wet sponge or a wadded up wet paper towel nearby to clean the iron's tip. Don't mess around with abrasives like sandpaper, wire brush, scotchbrite pad etc. to clean the tip when it can easily be decontaminated with a few wipes once it's up to proper operating temperature. No matter how badly gunked up and oxidized my tips end up getting a few quick wipes and they're clean and shiny and ready to be tinned.
 
#23
Alright, I finally managed to take off the original pickups. However, I do have a question. Inside the cavity for the bridge pickup, there is one of those things you attach a ground wire to (I'm not sure what it's called. There's another one between the neck pickup and the control cavity.) Originally, The ground wire from the bridge pickup was soldered to that and then soldered to the back of the volume pot. The installation instructions say nothing about connecting any wires to that. It just says, "Solder the green wire of each pickup to the back of its respective volume pot." None of the wiring diagrams I've seen have mentioned anything about this either. Should I attach the ground wire to it, or just ignore it and go straight to the pot?
 
#26
wyvern84 said:
Inside the cavity for the bridge pickup, there is one of those things you attach a ground wire to (I'm not sure what it's called. There's another one between the neck pickup and the control cavity.)Should I attach the ground wire to it, or just ignore it and go straight to the pot?
Click to expand...
you mean a brass plate, or a screw going into the wood?

in either case, it still needs to be grounded to the rest of the circuit, and you can then run the pickup ground either to it or through to the back of a pot, it won't matter.
 
#27
wyvern84 said:
I got some new pickups for my Fender MIM Jazz Bass, the Dimarzio Model J's (DP123). I wanted to install them myself, so I did a lot of research and I'm fairly certain I know enough to do this.

So I take off the pickguard and control plate, plug in my soldering iron, and get out the desoldering braid. I know which connections I have to desolder, so once the iron is heated, I start to desolder the old pickup. I put the braid on the connetion and heat it up. Nothing happens. It is my understanding that the solder should melt when I heat it and the braid should suck up the solder. I even put the iron directly on the connection for a few seconds to see if I could melt the solder, but I get nothing. :confused:

The only thing I can think of is that it's not hot enough. I'm using a 30 watt iron, which I've read should be enough for any guitar work. It's very capable of melting the rosin-core solder I bought for this job. I can only assume they must have used something very different to wire it in the first place.

Do I need to buy a stronger iron? I've read that you don't want anything stronger than 30 watts for guitar work so you don't damage anything. Causing any damage is the last thing I want.
Click to expand...
apply a bit of fresh solder
 
#28
walterw said:
you mean a brass plate, or a screw going into the wood?

in either case, it still needs to be grounded to the rest of the circuit, and you can then run the pickup ground either to it or through to the back of a pot, it won't matter.
Click to expand...

It's a screw going into the wood that's attached to some metal piece that the wire was soldered to. Are you saying it doesn't matter if I attach the ground wire to it as long as it's soldered to the back of the pot?
 
#30
Well, thanks to the advice from everyone here, I've managed to get the pickups up and working properly, except for one major problem. Whenever I start slapping (I usually play fingerstyle), the sound just cuts out. I have had to wait a couple minutes for it to come back when this happens. What could be causing this?
 
#36
When I first got the courage to put new p/u in my MIM J Bass, I encountered the same problem. The el-cheapo solder iron I got from Radio Shack did help much. After making multiple mistakes and taking everything apart several times, I learned some valuable lessons:

It pays to practice making good solder points.

You don't want to add solder to a solder point that has cooled

Diagram everything before you take anything apart

Make sure you plan out exactly what you need to do a good job (lengths of wire, ground points etc).

Go slow and make sure every solder joint is shiny and one continuous blob.
If you experience intermittent cutouts, there is a bad solder joint somewhere in your wiring

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but probably won't do it again.
 
#38
I'm willing to bet you made a rookie mistake, which is to not heat the back of the pots enough to melt the solder properly. You MUST heat them enough so that when you touch the solder to the back of the pot, next to the iron, it melts, without touching it to the iron. The solder should flow evenly out, over the wire and pot, to an almost flat layer. If it remains gathered in a blob, like a water droplet on a freshly waxed car, it won't stick for very long.
Sometimes you must scrub the pots first with sandpaper before the solder will flow/adhere properly.
 
#40
Sounds like a dry joint somewhere. You need to re-make the joints - they should look shiny, not crystalline. Heat up the iron, tin the tip, and re-apply it to the joints you have made, possibly adding a bit of solder as you do so. You need to keep the iron on the joint until the solder flows properly and "wets" the tag or whatever. don't move anything until the solder has solidified, or it will look crystalline again. If you go round each joint you made one by one, you will almost certainly be ok - sometimes a joint will look as though it's made ok, but it is really just a ball of solder sticking to the pot, etc, with hardened resin, and any mechanical stress may be enough to create a high (or higher) resistance.
Good luck, and let us know what happens - it's really frustrating when you don't get to hear what happens in the end!
 

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