Recording - September 2013 - 29

2b. Take the other conductors and strip
the covering back to reveal bare wire.
For both of these instances, make sure
not to cut too far. You don’t want the housing for the connector unable to cover up
a section of exposed wire, nor do you
want too much bare wire flapping around
in the connector itself. You just need
enough to apply solder to and connect,
not enough to french braid.
3. Once you have your wires ready, it’s
time to get soldering.
3a. Preheat your soldering iron; it will work
more smoothly when it’s up to temperature.
3b. Before starting work, you’ll want to
make sure that the tips of your wire are
tinned. This means applying a solder coat
to them. (Figure 7) Hold the iron steady
and feed it with solder. You won’t need
much. When tinning the shield, you’ll want
to go ahead and cover the whole thing so
as to not allow any uncoiling or breakage
later on.
3c. Apply some solder to the surface
you’re soldering to. (Figure 8) I always
make a little pool of melted solder inside
or on the connector, so that I can just heat
that up, place the wire in that pool and let
the solder do the work while just holding
it in place.
3d. Now, stop here! Before you solder
the wire to the connector, make sure that
you have the base of the connector (and
inner shield, if any) already on the cable.
(Figure 9) In the Figure, the piece that I’m
holding with my thumb goes onto the
cable first because it screws on to the top
piece of the connector. In between the
connector and the outer cover is the inner
shield. Obviously these can’t be put onto
the cable once the connector’s soldered
on... and equally obviously, you can’t
switch them around if you put them on in

the wrong order! If you forget and do any
of these things, you will bash your head
into the bench, cursing, and then have to
redo it all again.
3e. With some solder on the tip of the
iron, heat up the surface and place the
wire onto it. Make sure there’s enough solder on the connection to keep it firmly in
place. Err a little bit on the side of too
much if you have to, but avoid a cold solder joint (a big blob of unevenly melted
solder) if at all possible. Cold solder joints
give me nightmares; they and the accompanying nightmares are totally avoidable.
3f. Solder dries fast, so hold the wire there
for a moment—without burning yourself,
please—and then release to reveal a beautifully soldered connection that will sound just
as awesome as it looks. (Figure 10)
4. Once your work has cooled (this
only takes a few seconds), reassemble the
cable with the appropriate pieces. There
will be the connector itself the top covering of the connector, the base I mentioned, and sometimes a plastic shield for
the exposed wires. Figure 11 shows the
various pieces for an XLR connector, vs.
the 1/4" ones shown in Figure 9.
And there you have it. Set aside some
time to learn to do this; you’ll make mistakes the first few times, but it’s not difficult
after you’ve repaired a few cables, and
you’ll save money and gain confidence that
this common and annoying studio problem
is something you can fix yourself.
Eleanor Goldfield (goldfield@recording
mag.com) is a writer, tech, studio manager and performing artist currently working in the Los Angeles area. You can
learn more about her current music project at rooftoprevolutionaries.com.

RECORDING September 2013

http://www.rooftoprevolutionaries.com

Recording - September 2013

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