MOPED ARMY

Can't go wrong with Weller. American Science and Surplus has a soldering station for 30 bucks. Good enough quality for occasional use and finer work. Buy one of those handy helper holder thingys with the alligator clips too. For larger joints you might need a higher wattage hand held gun. A station is preferable for most of watt you're doing.

Weller soldering stations are very good, I still have my old one from my RC car racing days.

As somebody who used to run a guitar pedal company, worked in computer repair, went through lots of electrical engineering course, and works on cars and bikes- i will never go back to an electric soldering iron

Butane torch with a soldering tip is the good life and its cheap

@Alex: Oh woah, I'm actually hoping to do pedal work, as well as amp, cab, & guitar work w/ this iron! Interesting that you're so anti-electric; can I ask why?

Also, what pedal company did you run?

@Hydra: Damn, that station is so nice! That's a bit out of my budget, but I really like it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

You can use any soldering iron for the project your describing even a cheap one.

Id recommend getting mini clamps to hold everything in place while your soldering. Remember to use flux too. The low watt soldering irons take about 5 minutes to warm up and with really thick wire or cold weather it wont melt enough solder. I took a soldering class in school and all we used was the cheap irons. You will need an expensive soldering iron if you were micro solder repairing expensive computer chips, or wire less than 12 guage.

i absolutely hate that style of iron. the tips are fragile and they work even worse than $5 pencil tip irons.

Definitely Weller! Got 3 of them, similar to the one in the pic. Didn't pay a penny for any of them, they just needed simple repairs. Fast heating, with plenty of wattage to provide the heat for soldering larger items. Remember the wattage doesn't affect the temperature, just how capable it is of heating larger items. Try and get the old lead/tin solder with rosin flux core. modern lead-free solder is harder to use.

I've had plenty of pencil type irons .

Which iron do I pick up before any other ? My Weller 8200N .

BTW , the tips are far from anything like fragile . Rather robust , to be honest .

If you enjoy licking solder, lead poisoning is the least of your problems.

I never solder things, but we used one similar to what Adrian posted in school and i never had trouble with it.

my metcal is 15+ years old , pricey but worth it.

buyme

Yup! Been using one for almost a year! great as a soldering iron, can take it anywhere! And you can set things on fire! No flash light to check for tank rust? No problem!

I'm really annoyed though because I lost my soldering tip.... Gota quick question. What solder and flux do yall recommend/

I have a butane for mobile use in the shop, but I really like having an electric iron I can leave on and come back to. Never had an issue with losing temps, that's even soldering lug connections onto #1 and #0 theatrical wire

PD I use to use my Dad’s like that when I was a kid. Love it worked so good. So when I got my own shop I bought a newer version.....Hated it. Broke in a month. Bought another one....same shit. Never heated well and eventually stopped working. I bought a $5 Walmart no name brand stick type years ago and it still works great for small wiring jobs. Also love using a butane one.....I should probably buy one they are great. (edited)

Throw out that old soldering gun, and get these,