Caught the DIY bug

[aleal5687]

I think I am ready to try some  DIY projects.(3wirebb,4.7k mod,akg ck93 "actives") etc

Anyone have any advice/info for the following?

online retailer for diy projects(ta3f,bat boxes,)
soldering gun?solder?
book or online reference for electronic/technical info

thanks
Arnold

[OFOTD]

www.markertek.com

[notlance]

Markertek probably is what you're looking for, but www.partsexpress.com might be helpful, especially if you want to get into speaker building.

[fozzy]

also westlake-electronic.com  other sites are also very reputable.

[morst]

soldering gun?solder?

If you have never soldered, I would suggest working your way up to mic mods by building a bunch of cables or something easy. You don't wanna learn to solder on something expensive or breakable.

For solder, unless things have changed in the past years since I picked up the iron, you will want to use thin rosin core solder with a high silver content. Acid core is for plumbing, rosin is for electronics. The rosin acts as a flux (which allows the solder to flow). Don't use a gun, get a low-power iron with a fine tip for small electronics. When you first heat up the iron, you will need to "tin" the tip of it with a bit of flux & solder to get things started. You might want to pick up a de-soldering tool ("solder sucker") or some braid in case you make a mess on your project.

Practice practice practice! Remember delicate electronics can be rather heat-sensitive, so you may want to pick up some small hemostats or  cross-locking tweezers to clamp in between the spot you are soldering and the component.

[Sunday Driver]

Personal experience: I built a three wire battery box for my AT 853s. First time, it worked, but shorted out because there was some stray wire crossing another wire. After I fixed that, it seemed to work well, but during the first show with it I lost one channel. If I tapped on the top of the box, the channel would come back. Perhaps soldering the box together the night before the show and hot melt gluing it together the day of was a bad idea.

After that I decided it was best to leave gear building to people with some actual experience.

Don't let that stop you though.  I got all my parts through Radio Shack and digikey.com.

3 wire bb:
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,57512.msg756533.html#msg756533