Quarter inch cables have a tendency to break or at least show signs of weakness against angry drunken guitar players who yank their connectors right out. It is nothing personal, and bass players do it to.
In this video, Mike shows you how to identify a bad solder, how to fix it and demonstrates how to make your own cables.
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00:00:11 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 gonna want to know
about soldering.
00:00:23 Why do you want to know about soldering?
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.
00:00:32 But more importantly, it gives you
a 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.
00:00:40 Let's take a look at some of the tools
that you're gonna need
if you want to solder.
00:00:45 Here we've got a vise,
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.
00:00:53 Some of you might be into that,
but I'm not, so I'm gonna use the vise.
00:00:57 Then you have your blades, which you use
for stripping back jacketing on your cables.
00:01:02 Here we've got strippers.
00:01:04 These guys are sometimes known as
T-Strippers, or just strippers.
00:01:08 This is called a Mini Stripax.
00:01:10 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.
00:01:16 So whichever one you have
will work just fine.
00:01:21 Here we have a soldering iron,
and a base station.
00:01:24 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,
which is what you're using
when you work.
00:01:32 Also, a good soldering iron will work
at the proper temperature,
and maintain that temperature
the entire time you're working.
00:01:39 So you'll have an easier time
while you're soldering,
and you'll have stronger connections.
00:01:44 And last but not least,
rosin core solder.
00:01:47 Today, we're gonna talk about
guitar cables,
because they are some of the most
common cables that you work with,
and also, they're some of the simplest
when it comes to soldering.
00:01:55 First, I'm gonna show you an example
of a bad soldering job.
00:01:59 Then I'm gonna show you an example
of a good soldering job,
and explain to you how to do it.
00:02:04 So here's an example
of a poor soldering job.
00:02:06 I can see at least five things
that went wrong in this scenario.
00:02:10 For starters, let's note that
on a 1/4" guitar cable,
you've got two conductors:
the hot conductor up on top here, and
the shield conductor down on the bottom.
00:02:19 The first thing I noticed is that
the hot conductor
is supposed to have a non-conductive
jacketing that protects it.
00:02:25 In this case, somebody has stripped
the conductor so far back
that the entire length of the wire
in the connector is exposed.
00:02:33 This can lead to shorting
and corrosion down the road.
00:02:36 So this cable won't last you very long.
00:02:38 The second thing I noticed here
is that the shield conductor
is not making proper contact
with the sleeve of the connector.
00:02:44 That's pretty self-explanatory.
00:02:46 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.
00:02:54 So another thing I noticed over here
is that there's a giant amount of solder
where somebody tried to attach
the shield.
00:03:00 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.
00:03:06 That's not necessarily true.
In this case, it's actually detrimental,
because you'll see, the amount is so big
that it's actually coming close
to touching our other conductor up here.
00:03:16 Another problem I see here
is that the hot conductor
has what we call a cold-solder joint.
00:03:20 You can see that the solder here
is not as smooth or as shiny
as the solder that we have down here.
00:03:25 What that tells me is that
while this solder was drying,
the conductor was either moving
or shaking,
and now leaves you
with a weak solder point.
00:03:33 So somewhere down the line, that
conductor's gonna come off the pin,
and you're gonna lose your signal.
00:03:38 The other major problem I see here
is that our strain relief
isn't properly clamped down.
00:03:43 That leaves nothing to stop the force
of an angry guitar player
yanking on the cable, and possibly
breaking off your solder points.
00:03:50 By the way, whoever soldered this
reversed the hot and the shield.
00:03:55 So you could see here the hot is
actually soldered to the sleeve,
and the shield is actually soldered
to the tip,
where it's supposed to be the other
way around.
00:04:03 You could tell, because you could see the
jacket sticking out
on the hot conductor.
00:04:08 Now that I showed you why this sucks,
I'm gonna chop it,
and show you how to do it right.
00:04:15 Here's a tip for you.
00:04:17 Anybody who's ever soldered anything
can probably tell you
if they've made this mistake more times
that they could even count.
00:04:22 Before you even think about prepping
your cable,
take your backshell and put it on.
00:04:27 Otherwise, you're gonna hate yourself after
you solder it and realize it's too late.
00:04:32 The first thing we need to do is strip
back the jacketing on our cable.
00:04:35 If I look at my connector here,
I've got a strain relief,
and I've got my two solder points.
00:04:40 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 place,
so I can get them where they need to go
on the connector.
00:04:51 The blade is a very convenient
measuring tool.
00:04:54 In this case, if I look at the blade
next to the connector,
I see that this line here is almost
the perfect measurement
for how far back I want to strip
my cable.
00:05:03 So now, to strip back my jacket,
I'm gonna hold my cable
up to the line that I measured
and I'm gonna use my razor
to cut through the jacket.
00:05:10 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.
00:05:18 So this is what we should get after
we strip back our jacket.
00:05:21 Notice that none of the shield wires
have been cut.
00:05:24 The next step here is to twist
the shield wires into one conductor.
00:05:29 So we take them all here, bring them
all together, and twist them.
00:05:39 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 that I need to,
because that leaves the wire exposed
and susceptible to things like shorting.
00:05:52 To do so, I'm gonna use my Stripax.
00:05:56 This leaves me with a little bit
of the hot wire exposed
to solder it to my connector.
00:06:01 Now I'm gonna tin my wires.
00:06:02 Tinning is when you put a little bit
of solder on them
to get them prepared.
00:06:12 First, make sure that you've got
a nice clean tip on your soldering iron.
00:06:15 It'll make your job hell of a lot easier.
00:06:17 So now, you want to remember
that you only need
a little bit of solder
on your conductors.
00:06:31 Ok! So now that we've tinned our wires,
we also need to tin our connector.
00:06:36 This connector's already got
some solder on it,
because it was previously used.
00:06:40 So what I'm gonna do is just
reheat the solder a little bit
and put some new solder on it
to freshen it up.
00:06:49 So now we're gonna take the wires
and solder them on.
00:06:58 We put everything in place,
so that all we have to do
is heat it briefly with the soldering
iron, and everything will be good.
00:07:14 And there we have it!
So now, what we have to do
is clamp down the strain relief.
00:07:19 I'm gonna use my T-Strippers
here to do it...
00:07:21 and make sure we have a nice,
tight grasp.
00:07:30 Now it can't be pulled out.
00:07:33 Alright! That's a clean solder.
00:07:35 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
and holding everything in place,
and there's no exposed wire
where there shouldn't be.
00:07:46 This is gonna last you a while.
00:07:48 Now, the last thing we have to do
is put the backshell on.
00:07:51 We just got to screw it on...
00:07:55 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.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Yes - that first example looks like a piece of my handiwork :-)
5corde
2015 Apr 30
Nice, thanks.
I hate doing XLRs, sometimes the plastic part melt... :-)
DangerousMusic
2014 Nov 28
For those of you asking for temperature, it is generally recommended to use between 650 and 800 for audio cables. Usually it's best to play around with the temperature and see what works best for you. The better you get, the more you can raise the temperature because you can work quickly without melting the insulation (or burning yourself).
If you want the short answer though, just use 700
joelfarr
2014 Nov 27
I also would appreciate knowing a recommended temp!
lazarox10
2014 Aug 02
Thanks, very useful the video
AdRi__Forn
2014 Apr 21
really nice man!!
AndresDaza
2014 Mar 04
you should do one of these for XLR cables, and Snakes with DB25 connectors, TRS, TS and XLR (male and female)
dexter_quito
2013 Oct 16
Thank you for this information. You guys are simply the best!
j2fly
2013 Jan 01
I'd be curious to know the 'proper' temp to use when soldering cables as well. Thanks!
nemo970
2012 Dec 09
Hi, this can vary by specific cable, but on some cables the thin black shield on the hot wire should be removed as it is conductive.
http://www.sommercable.com/3__produkte/3__030_meterware/3__300_0071.html
MichaelAlan
2012 May 28
This video is awesome! I am no electronics engineer, but I have found that fixing cables is a pretty handy thing to know how to do. Thanks for hooking it up with the correct method!
derZorn
2012 Feb 20
Nice video.
I'm missing some details like temperature settings and what solder to use.
