Soldering Braided Coax

Tremaine

Tremaine

Chancellor of the EOPA
soldering coax braided ground is hard, if i try to solder it to anothre wire it melts the other wires casing before the coax braided ground wire is hot enuff to sitck to the solder, and i cant get it to stick to 1/4 TS eather.
am i using the rong solder maybe, right now im using small "lead free" solder <it came with a electrics soldering kit from the source <radio shack> and thats all it says. i beleave i have attempted this with plumbers solder before i knew better, with equal results...

tips, tricks, advice, opinions, please.

Peace World
Tremaine

btw Female 1/4 TS to Male Rca cost 8$Canadian each at the source, i got 10 off ebay, hongkong, for Less the 10$ Canadian, shiping included.
 
Lead free solder generally sucks balls , there are some OK Silver solders but you are better off getting Normal Flux Core Lead solder , the thinner the Solder the easier it is to work with ......

Try tinning both surfaces being soldered before trying to join them (tinning is when you melt solder to the wire/component so there is a thin coating of solder on it) , after there is a thin coating of solder on each surface of each thing you are soldering together then let it cool and then join them together .....


Cheers


PS: the Source/radio shack Suck for finding Parts and they are expensive , i use a handfull of E-bay stores and I also have a source for parts in Thailand that is really cheap ....
 
I always have a small piece of sandpaper (100 - 150 grit) when I do soldering.

For some reason, maybe it had oil on it from the factory's manufacturing process, solder won't stick to certain things like guitar plugs or even some wire. So I use the sandpaper on the wire or plug that I'm going to solder, just enough to make it really shiny, and that makes the solder melt really fast and flow nicely.

When you do copper tubing house plumbing, you see that solder only works well when the surfaces have nothing on them, when they're shiny like a new penny.
 
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A tiny bit of liquid flux brushed on the surfaces before soldering will help the solder flow a lot better.
 
Slave Deals

wholey crap
those poor people, litterly and figurtively.
they cant make more then a few cents a day, the slaves i mean, not the company.
thats unbeleaveable

8 pin DIP IC Socket Adaptor Solder Type = Price: $0.02
and i was going to pay 5cents a peace for them, HA!

you should post this somewhere more obvious, so more people can take advantage of it.

Thanks again dude
Tremaine
 
Rust Demons

dintymoore said:
When you do copper tubing house plumbing, you see that solder only works well when the surfaces have nothing on them, when they're shiny like a new penny.
Click to expand...

arnt connectors and whatnot, cromed or sometihng, i have always be wairy of sanding them, because i thought i was striping off the crome/finish, and creating a enviroment for evil rust demons to breed, degrading the sound quality and connectivity.

i sure i was rong at least once before...

this is a bit off topic, but should i be spraying my newly soldered joints with some type of protective sheilding? anti oxidization serum.

Peace
Tremaine
 
Most Wire is Copper and Copper doesn"t rust , it will eventually oxidize but when there is a solder coating over the wire it is protected from oxidizing and solder doesn"t oxidize or at least not quickly to be or concern ,and you should use shrink tubeing over any areas were there is a lot of exposed copper wire , it protects against shorts and insulates the wire ....

Cheers
 
Tremaine said:
arnt connectors and whatnot, cromed or sometihng, i have always be wairy of sanding them, because i thought i was striping off the crome/finish, and creating a enviroment for evil rust demons to breed, degrading the sound quality and connectivity.

i sure i was rong at least once before...

this is a bit off topic, but should i be spraying my newly soldered joints with some type of protective sheilding? anti oxidization serum.

Peace
Tremaine
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right, some connectors do have a chrome coating to protect against corrosion. I don't sand plugs and jacks if I don't have to. I always try to solder them without doing that, but sometimes it won't stick or flow right and that's when you need to use sandpaper on them, and then I do it sparingly, and hopefully the solder will cover all the places I lightly sanded.

Like Minion said, copper doesn't rust, just tarnishes like a penny. Only iron rusts, but all metals corrode in some manner. You don't need to spray anything on soldered joints that I've ever heard of, the solder seals it up.
 
75ohm Coax, good enuff?

hey, i know i could look this up, but this forums so dead i figured i'd put you dudes to work

is solder conductive? i know silver is, but aint lead an insulater?

is coax cable 'transparent' enuff to use? its 75ohm, am i gunna have to upgrade it soon, or can i get away with it for a while.

i dont expect perfect recordings, after reading some stuff on this site, i know now, that a home studio is mostly for perpairing for the real thing, i mostly want to use mine too finish songs, so there is no argument about how this part or that part goes...

on a side note: as a guitar player, i have been talking about building a music room for years, the other day i realized is was not longer building a music room, now im building a Home Recording Studio. cool eh. im evolving...

Peace Dudes
Tremaine
 
Solder is a conductor. The terminals on your car battery are lead.

I've never tried coax. Of course it's not normal, but it would probably work, not in an ideal way, but you might get away with it. If your ears say it's ok it's ok.

Cable doesn't have to be expensive. There's a zillion broken cables out there waiting to be fixed. :)
 
i was trying to think of something that used lead for conducting electricity, and i couldnt recall a thing. thanks for that, now i wont forget.
i got a block of lead, for car bodywork, anytihng i can use this for in my studio, without killing me. <i big resister?>

i read somewhere, and was told, 75ohm coax cable makes a good, sheilded guitar cable, i cant prove it thou.

a zillion... i live in a pretty <its actually not very pleasing to the eye> small town, i bet most of the crapy little studios fix there junk, but i will look into it. Had alot of cables the i collected over the years, as a guitar player, and i new i wood need lots when i started trying to record, but man i used them up fast, the i chopped them up and used them twice, the i got into my CB coax supply, now im staring at the dish on the roof of my house that i dont use...

Thanks dude
Peace
Tremaine
 
Proper 75 ohm coax (RG6 or similar) is typically excellent electrically for unbalanced AF applications as it has very low capacitance due to its foam core and good quality shielding. The problem is mechanical; with its solid conductor, foam core, and less flexible sleeve it's not ideal for a guitar cable.

RCA cables are typically line-level, thus the signal suffers less from cable capacitance because of low source impedance. But your average stereo home hi-fi RCA cable uses pretty thin coax that I imagine has high capacitance. It is also nowhere near as mechanically strong as a proper guitar cable.
 
mshilarious said:
Proper 75 ohm coax (RG6 or similar) is typically excellent electrically for unbalanced AF applications as it has very low capacitance due to its foam core and good quality shielding. The problem is mechanical; with its solid conductor, foam core, and less flexible sleeve it's not ideal for a guitar cable.
Click to expand...

The other problem with coax is that it's hard as heck to get a viable shield. They make the things under the assumption that you're going go shove a connector up under the jacket. Having made a few cables using RCA connectors on RG59/U, I'll never do that again. Had to cut the end off three or four times before I got enough unbroken shield fibers to make a decent connection.... :)

Nowadays, I just use premade coax with F connectors and add adapters to RCA as needed. And I haven't done anything with composite video in years anyway, but I've done the same thing with BNC connectors for component or whatever.
 
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