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Like all practical skills, practice!

Soldering new is easier than repair.

Get some dirt cheap ali express electronic kits and solder them up. Or get a load of components and some strip boards. Lead solder is much easier to use.

Basic antex iron. Stand with sponge...dab of solder on the iron, wipe on sponge, push iron against both board and component, feed in solder, admire.

For repair work, you want scrap boards real boards. Desolder all of the components, put them back.

Practice. Buy the fancier stuff once you know why it might be useful.

If you are going to do much soldering you need some kind of extractor. Flux in solder will cause breathing problems fairly quickly.

 help



Ts80p iron is super crazy nice for the price. Heats up really fast and there are a lot of tips out there. I'd say it beats my two soldering stations if you're only doing soldering.

And be your own critic. Aim for great, not just ok. Find out what dry-joints look like. And too much solder. Then aim for a really nice job :)

Agreed. My second buy in soldering would be a second cheap high wattage iron, (edit: 80-100w) for soldering to the back of pots, switches and plugs.

But try it with your normal iron first and you will see why, rather than me just telling you.




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