[Jongpil Yun]

So yeah, my pickups were noisy as shit, and position 3 barely worked, so I popped off the back cover, took a look inside, and the wires were pretty fucked up. I'm presuming the guy I bought it off did it himself, because I sure as hell hope no trained guitar tech did such a shit job. Some of them had like, half of the metal bit not touching anything, etc. So I bought a soldering iron (shitty one, I presume) and promptly unsoldered all the contacts with the intent of re-doing it more cleanly. So I've got the wiring diagram from Ibanez in front of me and stuff, I understand where to put stuff but...

I CAN'T FUCKING SOLDER ANYTHING!?

Seriously, I know where everything should go, and a basic idea of how this shit works, but holding the wire, the solder, and the iron together and dripping? the molten solder over the wire+contact area seems god damned impossible. I'm absolutely sure I'm doing this wrong somehow. I mean, I've got all the prep work done (stripping the ends of the wires, etc.) but what the hell man. When the solder melts it just sticks to the tip of the iron like some retarded viscous liquid or something.

Help is appreciated, and once I'm done with this I'll upload pics of my new 7620 complete with my 2nd official scallop job.

[djpharoah]

How To Solder - hope this helps.

[Haunted Cereal]

don't melt the solder to the soldering iron. heat the metal your connecting it toand melt it onto the metal and then put the wire on. then take the soldering iron away so the solder can cool and harden. and of course hold the wire with pliers as being a guitar player with burnt fingertips is rather frustrating

[ibznorange]

solder naturally flows to the hottest point, so its going to try to go straight on to your iron. so, what you want to do, is heat the connection, and put the solder opposite the connection from your iron. also make sure you properly tin your wires etc first, as that will make it way easier

[Mattmc74]

Originally Posted by djpharoah

How To Solder - hope this helps.

Sorry about your troubles man, if you lived by me I would do it for you! As long as you bought the beers!!!!

[forelander]

Tin the wires, tin the contacts (tinning assists in heat transfer when actually soldering and makes a stronger join), then hold the wire and solder in one hand and put the iron, solder and wire to the contact, feed some solder in, take solder away, wait 1-2 seconds to ensure the joint is properly wetted and then remove the iron. If the solder is sticking to your iron it means the iron is too hot or that the contact is too cold, tinning the contact might help that as the heat will better transfer from the iron to the contact.