[gychang]

Well, twice now I tried to mod t-amp for nonheadphone use. To drive my highly efficient speakers.

Twice I failed, smoked the first one after trying to mod the input caps, 2nd one I took off the solder plate with too much heat (see the attached photo), now I don't give up easily but wonder if I can do better next time, $30 per pop, next one will go near the $100 mark...

Basically I am trying to do the "stealth mod" as outlined here.
http://www.michael.mardis.com/sonic/start.html

This is getting to be "let's see who wins" thing.

gychang

 

[mono]

Where do you think your process is failing? What happened to smoke the first one? Why did you try to take off the solder "Plate"?

I suspect you need either a better soldering iron, lower temp soldering iron, or different soldering technique. To get the parts off, try adding flux to some desoldering wick and laying that across the part you want to remove. Heat the top of the solder wick and it wicks away some solder and when you lift it quickly but gently (making sure the solder is molten at both ends) the part will stick to it. If there isn't enough solder present to do this, tin the soldering wick first and put a tiny bit of flux atop the part you're removing.

 

[dcheming]

I'm also wondering about your soldering iron and/or soldering technique. If your iron is a POS, like a Rat-Shack model with a worn out tip for instance, then it would be all too easy to over heat things. Also it looks like the 4 tinned pads where the caps used to be are all lifted from the board, but it's hard to tell from the pic. If they were indeed lifted then excess heat or pulling the caps off before the solder was molten would be the cause, either of which could be due to a bad soldering iron or tip. Let us know what you're using and how you're doing things so we can help you figure out what's going wrong.

 

[gychang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mono /img/forum/go_quote.gif To get the parts off, try adding flux to some desoldering wick and laying that across the part you want to remove. Heat the top of the solder wick and it wicks away some solder and when you lift it quickly but gently (making sure the solder is molten at both ends) the part will stick to it. If there isn't enough solder present to do this, tin the soldering wick first and put a tiny bit of flux atop the part you're removing.

thanks, this is a useful tip (no pun intended). I did it too aggressively but now using the wick, gentle heat and flux makes good sense.

gychang