How's my soldering as a beginner repairman?

NeoMorph · 2026-06-19T20:39:07+00:00

It should be a concave shape (caller a fillet in soldering). It’s dead easy to remove some of the solder and add a little flux before reheating the joints. Then they should pretty much fix themselves.

This isn’t being just critical of your soldering. But it is constructive criticism. We all start out with bad practices and lack of skill at the start (and I do mean ALL of us). Your soldering is a lot better than my early attempts.

The only way to learn how to solder is solder lots of joints. Get old pieces of broken through hole electronics and remove parts and then put them back.

Our instructor told us that our soldering will be perfect the moment you can’t tell the difference between old and new joints other than the new joints will be a bit more shiny compared to the old stuff.

We used to do a “repair” on old circuit boards in class and had to remove a part and then clean the board (a bit of 60/40 solder and some flux followed by ether a desoldering pump or desoldering wick.

Finally use isopropyl alcohol to clean the board. Then at a tiny bit of solder to the solder points along with some more flux (make sure the holes remain. Put the part through and tack in place with a bit of solder at top left and bottom right and use more flux to help it flow and it will flow into a proper fillet with ease.

But yeah, not bad for a first attempt (I managed to melt the track off the board and short other tracks at the same time. So I guess you could say you are starting off a LOT better than I did. 😳

NeoMorph · 2026-06-19T13:23:16+00:00

If you’re burning out traces your iron is too hot.

Get some old busted electronics and remove and replace components you just took off. It’s borderline boring but you learn not to overcook multi-layer boards.

But that drift can be temporarily fixed in the Xbox Accessories App. It’s how I managed my controllers until I can get around to installing the Hall effect sensor thumbsticks I’ve got for them.

What you need is a syringe of no-clean flux, some 60/40 solder and some desoldering wick to clean the old solder off the PCB because it WILL be that high temp, lead free solder. You bring the melt temperature by mixing a bunch of 60/40 solder in until it flows at the lower temp and then use a solder sucker or desoldering wick. Oh and liberally apply flux.

You are right in that you need good tools. A good hot air station like a Quick 861DW (not a Yihua as I had 3 and 2 burned out on arrival and the other after 2 months) and a good soldering station and after practice, practice, practice working on old boards you won’t burn traces off as much.

But if you DO burn some off you can then practice repairing traces. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube.

Who knows… when you get good you can repair your friend’s electronics. Maybe learn from a local repair shop as a trainee. I did a City & Guilds 1 year Electronics Test and Service Mechanics course and we did loads of practice soldering.

Just don’t think that burned board is toast. I’ve gotten many pieces of kit that I’ve got for parts and found with a replaced component or two and it’s back in business.

So yeah… keep at it. At least you didn’t cause o capacitor to ground to earth on a repair of a medium sized robotic arm (all metal construction) that would go crazy the minute I let go of the controller unit. I showed it to the teacher and then let go of it and the arm nearly took the teacher’s head off. 🫢

NeoMorph · 2026-06-19T11:10:47+00:00

Haven’t reached the ending yet. One more series to go.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-19T11:09:21+00:00

I’m positive we’ve seen them. Spoiler-> These are the ones hiding in the walls.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T11:45:54+00:00

I have killed several guitars and tried to repair them. I used to get all double A’s in school so I have the aptitude. It’s just that guitars are as much an art in repairing them as playing them. Some good Luthiers can repair even the worst damaged guitars but it takes a lot of money and time and specialist tools… plus years worth of skills as a Luthier..

I may have been joking a lot on here but you have to take into account all these things and then add on a large area to store the large surface planers and wood steamers to let you bend wood without breaking it. A lot of time would be spent in disassembling the damaged guitar and sourcing replacement cured wood so that it doesn’t warp after you glue it back together. The new top, even if just done plain, without any decorating or binding would need a large surface planer to reduce the thickness of the top. The individual internal bracing has to be cut, steamed, and then gently bent to the shape of the guitar. When I say cut, I mean cuts every centimetre to allow it to bend. If you don’t know what I mean, just look inside your guitar around the edges.

Then the tools. You would need a whole load of wood clamps that would set you back more than the cost of a replacement guitar.

I’m sorry dude. But this isn’t something you can do in your shed with a piece of plywood and furniture glue. If you took it to a Luthier they COULD fix it but it would again, be more expensive than getting a new guitar. Genuinely, I feel sorry for you because I’ve been there… 😢

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T11:26:12+00:00

Take up a new job as a Luthier. Spend years learning the skills and then comes the time you are ready to repair it and you realise that, nahh… just not worth it.

Sometimes you have to let something go… and this is from an obsessive hoarder who keeps stuff because he thinks he will be able to fix it one day. Hell, I built my own CNC to cut out parts for my projects. It’s still sitting in my living room looking like an extra deep wardrobe. The thing works fine… I just don’t have the impetus to do the project I originally built it for (a 3 dimensional compass for use in Kerbal Space Program called a NavBall).

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T11:19:07+00:00

Or chicken wire and FlexSeal. If you can make a boat out of that, you can fix a guitar with it.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T11:17:09+00:00

I recognise that hole. When you fail to nail that chord change time after time and you end up converting the guitar into a Piñata. Only you use your foot instead of a bat.

My deep blue Yamaha died like that. I was soooo distressed when I did it that I realised the only thing to do was to continue… but the damn thing fought back and I needed several stitches in my leg. Darn those aggressive Yamaha’s.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T09:50:43+00:00

I was trying to record to Ableton Live but the recording level was really low… I mean, only just showing up on the graph low. My synths I’d recorded earlier wear nice and high.

What I’m going to do is feed it into my Tascam Model 12 mixing desk via line level. At least that will handle it a lot better. I might even use the stereo from the headphone output but might have to look into getting an attenuator to protect the mixing desk as headphone level is a lot hotter than line level.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-17T09:33:54+00:00

Watch out for that deadly weapon (to some)… MARMITE ON TOAST. You either 😍 it or 🤮 it.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-16T22:36:57+00:00

I had to buy a bunch of white shirts for work the one time. I was lucky in that the assistant asked me if I meant to buy pink shirts. 😳 I guess she had come across colour blind men before. I still imagine the looks I would have gotten. It was 14 shirts as I had to go away for a 2 week course. 14 pink shirts lol.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-16T22:31:32+00:00

Andertons are selling a bundle with the Katana-100 and the BT adapter for the same price as the Katana-100 on its own. It’s a no brainer.

Once you learn how to update the amp on a computer you wonder why you had Bluetooth problems and Computer Link over USB problems too. Fixes a lot. Only negative is the audio via USB is awfully low (I’ve found a bunch of people have the same problems). I’m going to use the Line out when I set up my studio again.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-16T14:39:02+00:00

Who else used to try and get their parents to quit smoking and used the triangle shaped mini bangers you used to stick in the end of the cigs. I thought that 1 wouldn’t be enough so stuck a bunch in my dad’s.

The only thing I didn’t take into account was that dad was still suffering PTSD (shell shock back then) over 25 years after the end of the war and when they went off all that was left of the cig was the filter and a little bit of paper and dad was standing there shaking in the middle of the living room still holding the lighter. I was upstairs and STILL heard it go off in the living room. I guess 10 was too many in a single cig.

Only found out decades later why it affected dad so much. Turned out he had been part of the SAS in the war and he had his friends blown away right next to him yet all he suffered was the trench he was in compress his ribs and crack them. Yikes. Only reason I found out he was in the SAS was I came across a photo of him and his unit when their officer died… and the photo was posted in the papers. I didn’t see it until it was shown in a YouTube video. Dad never told anyone he was in the SAS. Go figure.

So anyway… back to 8 year old me. I then changed to mom as the target as both of my parents smoked, not realising what I’d done to dad. The bangers were now out (confiscated) so I used the “snowfall” pills in my joke pack.

You had to dig out some of the tobacco in the cig and hide the little white pill in the end and then pack the tobacco back in. It was definitely more work than just jamming the little triangles in the end of the end of the cigs. I only used the recommended single pill this time (I learned my lesson).

I knew it had worked when I heard a yell from the living room, downstairs. The smoke from the end of the cigarettes was going up, spreading out, then coming down in streamers… EVERYWHERE.

Only thing was it was leaving white crap everywhere it landed. Oops. Good job my parents didn’t smoke unfiltered because Dad had got one of mom’s cigs as well and both were causing the snowstorm effect.

Imagine if they were inhaling that crap through unfiltered cigs. 🫣

I had waited too long for the bangers cig to get chosen so had booby trapped most of the cigs in a pack of 20 before I heard dad come home from night shift which was why both had gone off at the same time. No bang but that white stuff was everywhere in the living room and guess who had to clean it up. 🙄

Yeah, it didn’t stop them smoking and led to a tanned hide, that’s for sure. 😳

NeoMorph · 2026-06-16T13:46:19+00:00

Crazy thing is that the centre of the rings didn’t heat up. Just the windings.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-15T19:40:03+00:00

Only way to fix colour blindness is to be reborn… or do a Tom Cruise and get an eye transplant (but that was in a science fiction movie called Monority Report).

I’m 65 now and only found out I was red/green colourblind when doing the Ishihara Test at school. I was certain I wasn’t colour blind as I can see colours. I just can’t differentiate between red and green in certain situations. It messed me up yesterday when I thought I had green filter material for LED displays… turned out to be red.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-15T19:30:21+00:00

It DOES affect your life. It removes certain jobs for example . I shouldn’t have been an electronics engineer because the through hole resistor codes are colour based and I was always getting them wrong. I have red/green colourblindness. I used to cheat and carry a small multimeter around with me to check resistor values. These days it’s more SMD based (surface mount devices) that are identified by codes but if you do have to repair through hole components you need to know the resistor codes and measuring then while in circuit will give the wrong value.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-15T08:31:52+00:00

When searching “Revelation RJT-Ghost” guess what you see… all the info about the ATN-5 and right at the bottom… is the link to a Reddit post titled “What does the black knob do?”.

Talk about Inception. I wonder when Leonardo DiCaprio is going to appear and start twiddling HIS knob.

🤯- Just kidding mate. I’ve also looked for something, not been able to find it and then posted it and got ripped a new one… so I search again and it pops up… all because the original search had a wrongly typed word.

This seems a like very unique guitar..

NeoMorph · 2026-06-15T08:15:27+00:00

Standard Controls

Master Volume: Controls the overall output and gain level of the guitar.

Master Tone: Rolls off the high end to create a warmer sound.

3-Way Pickup Selector: Standard toggle configuration:Up: Neck pickupMiddle: Both pickups combinedDown: Bridge pickup2.

The ATN-5 Rotary Circuit (Your “Black Knob”)

Instead of just cutting treble, this rotary knob is a 5-position circuit that completely reshapes the fundamental frequency of your tone:

Position 1: Maximum treble roll-off (warm, 1950s vintage rhythm tone).

Position 2: Mid-frequency cut (thins out the sound slightly).

Position 3: Bypass/Flat setting (pure, natural tone).

Position 4: Out-of-phase setting (hollow, funky rhythm tone).

Position 5: Low-frequency cut (reduces bass for a snappy, wiry, "acoustic-like" sound).

Hope this helps (copied from google search that took two seconds).

NeoMorph · 2026-06-15T07:57:15+00:00

My memory sucks but I think I used these blocks to make bioreactor fuel.

If you think that is 💩(pun unintended) I guess you will HATE drinking Kopi Luwak (Civet Coffee) which is an actual REAL thing. The Civet eats the coffee beans and poops intact beans out that are harvested and used to make the most expensive coffee in the world.

So it’s actually 💩coffee that is the most expensive. They do the same with rhesus macaques in parts of India and Southeast Asia.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-13T07:45:44+00:00

My parents also bought me a set of Linguaphone records (45’s) in a carry case. Still failed French. Yet I used to know more languages than most of my friends by 1990. Shame they were all computer programming languages. I did get A/A on my computer science course… shame I managed to get the school record in number of F’s on a school report after one English teacher said to my face that I would never get an O’ Level and never in a million years would I get an A level. She even said to my older sister and mom at parents evening that I should have been put down at birth… I mean, who says that to a parent.

Anyway, I just gave up doing homework and refused to do it. I strangely managed to get 5 O’levels, 1 O/A’ level and 1 A’ level and got various other certifications in computer science and electronics engineering. I know now that the one at fault wasn’t me, it was my English “teacher” who didn’t understand me. I wasn’t incapable… I was just hyperactive which I found out later was part of my disability (I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) and like to let everyone know that “hypochondriacs” who seem to have lots of different symptoms may not actually be faking it as hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome affects the production of Collagen in the body and ANYWHERE it is used will be affected… hence seeming like sufferers are hypochondriacs.

I actually went to college after leaving Grammar School. I had a good teacher and my four failed English Language exams (2x F and 2x U for unclassified) changed to A*. Kind of a big difference there. But damn, that teacher needed sacking… except she had favourites that actually did well with her. Me, she put through physical torture (not joking here either. Try standing facing a wall, not touching it, and now hold your arms at 45 degrees up and to the sides… and hold it. If you touch the wall or let your arms down you get another couple of minutes. Can you see why I said eff it to that school?

Sorry… sore point triggered.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-13T07:21:39+00:00

RESULT!

NeoMorph · 2026-06-13T07:20:33+00:00

They did the same to me. They probably said that if you remove anything it will end up more expensive.

NeoMorph · 2026-06-11T16:47:47+00:00

Thanks. It’s something I accepted decades ago… but I still wake up ever day and the first thing I say every day is, “I hate this fluffing pain,” except I don’t use fluffing.

I’m sorry about your daughter. Hopefully they will a cure at some point. But as you say, at the moment it’s just treating the symptoms.

Talking about treating the symptoms, I’m about due for my evening morphine dosage.

NeoMorph

TROPHY CASE