help/advice/tutorials

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

And if you plan on making many pedals, invest in a Hakko 936. It's worth it!

[pandadandan]

And if you plan on making many pedals, invest in a Hakko 936. It's worth it!

Amen.

[gtr2]

They just came out with the new version of the 936 too!   

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

A guy in my class got the lowest model of the new one that just came out, and it's even better! Warms up in 15 secs literally, comes with a sponge and brillo pad to keep the the tip tinned nice!! And he got his for under $90.

[jtn191]

yeah, I may actually be in the market for a new iron...I've been using a 25 (30?) watt Weller "Project Iron". Where wattage is concerned, it's fine--but as far as I know you can't buy any replacement screw-in tips...plus the cord is way short. Besides the Hakko, how are Radio Shack stations? Normally, I'd guess "not good" but there's one sitting in the lobby of our recording studio right now and it seems to have been reliable. How about the GFS "Xytronic" ones?

[gtr2]

You get what you pay for with irons, within reason.  Stay away from "rat shack" irons...you'll be doing yourself a favor!

Josh

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

You get what you pay for with irons, within reason.  Stay away from "rat shack" irons...you'll be doing yourself a favor!

Don't get me wrong there's is a lot of good equipment out there that some of us may not have ever seen. But if your gonna be spending $50-80 you miswell go for a reliable one that you won't have to worry about. I had so much trouble in the beginning with horrible irons and this really made my life much easier! Also there is about 20 weller irons in my class and I really don't like them. I've used them before with success and sometimes I wouldn't be so lucky!
But like Josh said, you will most likely get what you pay for. And the tips for the Hakko iron are really cheap. Under $10 bucks and there's 50 different tips sizes and shapes to choose from!

[irmcdermott]

I'll give a shout out for Xytronic. I own the now discontinued auto-temp 379 and it's great.

http://www.xytronic.com/pi/379.htm

It looks like it's replacement is digital, but I can't speak on how it is. Both mine and the one that replaced it can be found for just over $50. It's one investment I'm glad that I made. I attempted to build my first pedal with an $8 RadioShack iron, and immediately threw it away once that build was done and picked up this one.

[mandrewbot3k]

I love my circuit specialists iron. It is fantastic. Digital controls and comes with an extra ceramic element. Tips are about 5 bucks/ea from them. They seem to be leaning towards their blackjack now which I don't have any experience with. My iron heats up to 300C in about a minute. fantastic iron, especially for the price. It was recommended by Beavis Audio so I went with it.

You also get a free gift if your order is over $50 so i got some extra tips and some heat shrink and got a free DMM with capacitance setting, which I didn't have before. But the quality of the DMM is a little low as the leads on the probes are sort of intermittent. But thats not a soldering station problem. :-D just my 2cents