[wuwhere]

I agree. I don't solder often but whenever I do, I want it to work safely and properly. I also have a solder sucker (from Radio Shack, it works fine).

 

[TheRH]

A small fan that is not on your work surface( may cause vibration) and sucking air are away not towards your soldering is excellent. 

 

[shadow419]

Quote:

I bought a Pailiccs 3.5mm plug and I'm having a fairly difficult time with soldering the wires to the contacts. Are there any tips that someone could provide? Am I suppose to somehow remove the black portion where the contacts are? Those small smooth contacts makes it impossible for me to solder anything on it. I'm fairly new to soldering and new to head-fi forum community. Photo of the connector is here: http://cdn.head-fi.org/e/e3/e37bed15_PA35.jpg
 
Thanks for the help in advance
 
 

A little bit of solder on the connector, and tinning the wire you're going to solder helps tons.
 

 

[jonathanjong]

I'm about to reterminate using these plugs too. But I'm told headphone cabled have 3 wires. Where do I solder each wire to? Which of the two small gold bits shown in the photo are L and R? And where does the ground go?

 

[liamstrain]

It looks to me like the furtherst back (innermost) should be the tip = left channel, next is the ring (right channel) then furthest forward, and outermost, is the shield (ground). A multimeter (which you should get - they are cheap) will confirm.

 

[ijchan223]

EDIT: Sorry didn't look at the date of the OP 
 
The best soldering advise is to always tin everything you want to solder together and to use flux on wires.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku8jIMoj8XE

 

[jonathanjong]

So, is the shield that bit closest to the 3.5m plug itself, that thicker than the other two?

 

[TheRH]

Starting from the center out follow this. the center is left, the right is the ring or connector just out side of the center, and the most outside is the ground or sleeve (shield).
 
 

 

[mechno]

Having just purchased a Pailiccs 3.5mm 3 conductor connector to replace the connector on my Shure E2C headphones and having pretty robust experience when it comes to soldering I'll attempt to answer the original poster.
 Starting with a clean soldering iron, apply a little solder to your tip. This aids in the conducting of heat to the pad that you want to apply the solder to.
Touch the liquid solder on the iron to the target area and apply the solder to the connector, not your iron.  Do this to your pads and to your wires so that when the time comes to connect them, you just tough with your iron and they will melt together cleanly and strongly.
 
 And now to what actually brought me to this thread. The Pailiccs is weird. I'm not sure if it has a specific application, specialized attachment couplings or what, but this connector is almost useless for the DIY connector replacement. The pads that you have to solder to are buffered by a plastic that does not stand up to soldering temperatures, there is no stress-relief mechanism built into the connector so all strain is put on your solder joints, and the aperture on the screw on connector is HUGE. I'm pretty sure I could thread cat6e into this connector.
 
 I'm going to investigate what is up with these odd little connectors, but they are not what I would recommend for this type of project.
 
-mechno

 

[ColdFlo]

Anyone ever figure out these whackjob connectors?  I bought a bunch of these awhile back because they were the cheapest recommended 3.5mm jack, but time to use one to make up and lod unscrew it, and What, never seen anything like this.  I was wondering too about the huge hole and lack of stress relief glue gun?.  I should have looked for photos of the connector open but coming has recommended I took that for granted.  Whats worse is this thread has no resolution and only steps to get the connector to function not the process of how its done.  I think this brand is chinese or at least asian their printed brand on the connector is Pailiccs but their website is Palic and has pictures but absolutely no information other than generalized marketing hype terms under each photo as if they are actual product aspects yet every product from toslink to hdmi cable has the exact same features lol.

 

[wakibaki]

Don't use plumbing solder. Don't use solder of unknown content. Buy some leaded multicore flux-bearing electronics solder, preferably 63/37 eutectic with a mil-spec flux. It's nice, but not essesential, to have different gauges for fine and coarse work.

w

 

[ColdFlo]

Id rather use high content silver solder and a high grade possibly even acidic flux like ruby fluid.  What I mean is procedure and geometry plus stress relief steps/order of operations for this weird connector.  Soldering steps wouldnt hurt either no so much the soldering itself but orientation of wires/best practices for this connector.