While my soldering has improved 10,000% with the addition of reading glasses (I'm officially an old fart) and rote practice, my weakest joint is at the guitar jack.
Any tips/tricks or am I just a goober?
-Mike
Cut the lead extra long, wrap it over itself through the hole on the jack then once around itself. Makes a super strong physical connection for soldering.
A dab of liquid flux can make them much less annoying in my experience. I use a needle-point dropper (all I could find in town), but flux pens also work extremely well for such applications.
Get some coarse sandpaper and scuff the tabs. The solder will "absorb" into the abrasions. Some brands are worse than others. Switchcraft seems to be the worst for some reason.
the scuffing tip is also recommended for the backs of pots
The Neutrik Rean variety seem to be about the best for soldering. No fiddling around the solder sucks right up. Maybe higher tin content or cadmium plating?
I totally thought people would have no idea what I meant or would think this was minutiae. Thanks for not making fun of me.
I appreciate the tips and Brian that's my current practice, but I just shipped a pedal off for a demo that worked prior to shipment, I actually took a video. So, I'm populating a list of suspects to run down. That was my number one suspect. Guess I'll chill out and wait till I get my hands on it.
-Mike