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Church Sound Maintenance: Cable Soldering In 10 Easy Steps
With a little practice and a few dollars worth of tools, you won't need to throw away those broken cables any more. You'll be able to fix them yourself
Feb. 09, 2010, by Mike Sokol & Hector La Torre
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  Church Sound, Techniques, Maintenance, Soldering

Caution
If you’re going to be doing lots of soldering in a closed room, then you should consider a ventilation fan to keep the fumes away from your face and out of your lungs.

For instance, Weller makes a nice fume fan called the WSA350, which you can place on the table next to your soldering pencil.

It has an activated charcoal filter, which removes most of the smell from the smoke that will surround any soldering table. Available for $60 or so, it’s an important safety tool for any large soldering job such as wiring a patch bay or stage box.

Also be aware that due to recent EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations in the U.S., lead is being removed from all solder assembly processes. What this means is that a new amplifier, mixer or even cable you purchase now or in the future may be assembled with the new lead-free solder alloy.

This shouldn’t affect small repairs made using standard 60/40 lead-tin Rosin Core solder as described above, at least for the time being.

But most gear that you purchase from Japan or Germany probably already adheres to these lead-free standards, and soon all U.S.-made gear will do the same.

If you’ll be doing new assembly of gear using these lead-free solder alloys, there is a considerable amount of noxious fumes generated by the more aggressive fluxes required.

In that case, a serious vapor hood and HEPA filter will be required to protect your work environment.

However, this shouldn’t affect you if you accidentally use lead-tin solder on a lead-free solder joint since these special fluxes have been washed away as part of the original assembly process.

Mike Sokol is the chief instructor of the HOW-TO Church Sound Workshops. He has 40 years of experience as a sound engineer, musician and author. Mike works with HOW-TO Sound Workshop Managing Partner Hector La Torre on the national, 36-city, annual HOW-TO Church Sound Workshop tour. Find out more here. 


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Comments (6) Most recent displayed first | All comments in chronological order
Posted by Ray Siegler  on  09/27/11  at  08:34 AM
Comment by brad000143 looks like SPAM.

If this is moderated, and I hope it is, Please kill this with his.

Posted by brad000143  on  09/27/11  at  07:03 AM
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Posted by Jon J  on  10/27/10  at  08:02 PM
There is one very important step left out of this how-to: place the strain relief or barrel onto the wire before soldering. I like to place it before stripping the wire, as they can be difficult to install on stripped wire. (I'll admit, I've soldered up a connection only to realize the relief/barrel/nut wasn't there. More than once.)
Posted by Ray Siegler  on  04/20/10  at  08:43 PM
Amen to the previous poster. If the newbie solders the shield into one solid chunk - you can bet he's in for some hum. Radio Shack still sells, last time I checked, a small aluminum heat sink device. Looks kind of like an odd clothespin. Put this about 1/4" from the bottom of the braid, where it meets the cable. Then tin it as above.

Also, I would say that an inch of .032 is a bit more than I use. We only need to get a solid solder joint here.

One other tip - if the shield is done correctly, it has a lot more strength than the conductors. If it is cut just 1/8" inch short, and allowed to take most of the strain, the cable will last longer. On some female connectors, the ground solder tab is already inset about 1/16th or so. If you have this kind of connector, cut them all the same length, and the existing setback will cover the relief we are after here.

Posted by Carl L  on  03/07/10  at  11:52 PM
I under this is a "quick-guide" for use with limited tools. But i'm honestly surprised by a number of things: You did not use a good stripper for cutting, you just hacked away. You did not heat shrink the ground wire as is typical (for us at least). And you didn't heat shrink the transition from conductors to solid jacketing. Yes, yes the easy way out tends to work just find, but more often that not I come to venues who have tried this method with a horrible outcome.

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