Soldering Help

@desferous:

     Personally: I have never had a soldering iron turned up past what the solder manufacturer recommended.

     Nor: have a ever had the first problem with solder flowing nicely and quickly, whether on circuit board traces, point to point/multi-wire on a post, or: anything else, on a piece of electronic gear.     

     That's in over six decades of soldering (I was 12 when I learned), doing builds, repairs and upgrades, both professionally and as a hobby.

     When the eutectics hit the scene...what a Godsend!

     I have of course: of necessity, changed to larger tips, to sustain temperature on bigger joints.   The tiny tips are fine, when apropos.   ie: For upgrading those crappy, itty-bitty surface mount, electrolytic capacitors, with higher grade, radial lead caps (sans a mile of lead, each).     Soldering tweezers, to get the little boogers off the board,

      When desoldering: I find an out of the way joint and find the lowest melting point, of the OEM solder and proceed at that temp.      A soldapullt is a worthwhile investment, btw.       

       https://www.amazon.com/EDSYN-The-Original-Deluxe-SOLDAPULLT/dp/B006GOKVKI

      There are opinions and then: there's what the manufacturers know about their own products and electronic applications.

      I'll trust the guys that make the stuff (always worked for me and why I posted the above article)!

                      Your choice, of course (it's still a free country)!

                                           Happy holidays!

Soldering has become second nature to me, especially with the right tools. De-soldering on the other hand can vary by the way of what technique may be best, i.e., exactly what kind of solder was used to begin with, how sturdy (heat wise) are the traces, and how much solder do you need to remove. 

  Hakko has made very fine soldering tools and de-soldering tools as well. I am sure that my end product is partly due to this.

The comments auxinput makes about parts like the board being a heat sink are why it takes practice to solder well. Proper technique involves heating the parts to be soldered to where the solder will melt when touched to the wire. This ensures solder drawn well into the joint. Merely melting solder onto the joint can result in a cold solder joint, one that looks okay, but isn't, because the solder is merely covering and not really joining. 

It takes practice and experience. I started with a Dynamo as a kid and have done it a lot over the years, but even so it can take a bit of practice to get it down again if you haven't done it in a while.

Hello, Thank you all.  I am understanding some of the nuances better from your points. 

My project does not involve a board.  I bought a handmade tube preamp.  It is an incredible upgrade for sonically on many levels. We have been using it without the gain disable switch on.

When I flip the gain disable switch, music only comes from one channel.  

It is basically one wire to wire connection that needs to be soldered.

I might know a guy down in Greenfield, Mass who repaired my son's guitar amp a while back.  I could give him a call and see. 

It is just the is question of the time and cost for someone else to do it compared to buying some equipment and trying to learn something new myself.

Point to point wiring, love it, only way I go with pre and amps these days.

I agree, temp of gun varies with amount of heat sink working with, binding posts can take much heat. Just need to protect other in circuit components with their own heat sink.