Hello, steemians, and welcome to my page, eh!
Today's post is about fixing a guitar cable. Any guitar player who uses a cable to plug into an amp knows how much abuse they get when performing. They get stepped on and dragged around, and there's a lot of stress put on the plugs when in use. Most of the time, the guitar cable fails at the plug. Usually a wire breaks off the plug on the inside, and the cable stops working, works intermittently, or gets noisy. Sometimes a cable breaks somewhere in the middle, and that's almost impossible to find, so that cable isn't fixable.
Over the years, I've fixed a lot of guitar cables by replacing the ends. I fixed one of my old cables a couple of weeks ago and documented the process to show you how I do it. You only need a few tools to do something like this. I use a soldering gun because it gets hotter than an iron and can heat up a larger piece that you're working on. I use a wire stripper and a small knife to strip and prepare the wire. I use flux core electrical solder and solder rosin to tin the wires and the plug solder points. It's handy to have some kind of a clamp to hold onto the plug while you're soldering the wire onto it, that way you have both hands free to hold the wire and the soldering gun.
So, lets take a look at the stuff.
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Here, I have 1 end of the cable prepared for soldering. Don't forget to put the plug cover on the cable before you solder on the plug. I know from experience that you have to take the plug back off at that point to put the cover on the cable.
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Here's the plug with the wire soldered on. The center wire goes to the center connection and the outer wire goes on the outside shield lug.
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The plastic insulator cover slides over the plug first, then the outer cover screws onto the plug.
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I put a piece of shrink tubing over the cable and the plug cover as a bit of a strain relief. This stuff starts out larger in diameter and it's heat sensitive, it shrinks when you heat it up, so it gets pretty tight if you have the right size tubing.
This end is now done.
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For the other end of the cable, I'm going to use an angle plug. Angle plugs are pretty handy to have at the end that you plug into the guitar, it's easier to deal with the cable when it's not sticking straight out of the guitar.
Both the cable and the plug have been prepared for soldering them together.
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Here is the cable soldered to the plug.
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All that's left to do is put the cover on the plug. The cover also provides some strain relief.
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That's pretty much all there is to fixing a broken plug or connection on a guitar cable.
I hope you found it to be useful information, or at least interesting.
Thanks for stopping by my page and checking out my post!
As always, feel free to leave a comment or a question if you would like.
May the Steem Force be with you!
This is something all guiter players need to know how to do, thanks for sharing!
This is awesome. I have so many old guitar cables, I'll have to try this sometime and bring them back to life.
If I ever need to do this , glad I have a post to guide me through :)
Good post friend for the lovers of the guitar is a great contribution so we save ourselves cost in repair
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