Yesterday I was recording some ideas in my home studio and, of course, my guitar jack went out on me. When I work in my studio I routinely go back and forth from bass to guitar. Plug in, unplug, plug in, unplug: over and over. Well, I only have one electric guitar and it’s seen better days. I’ve had to re-solder this input jack on several occasions already. What happens is you plug in to your guitar and there’s a bit of play in the cord which will allow the 1/4″ plug to move around. This can eventually knock a wire off the connection. Often times you can just pull the jack out and reattach the wire if you have enough cable. But the time has finally come where I ran out of excess wire. So, yesterday I not only had to re-solder the input jack but I had to replace the wires for it all together.
I’ve worked on my own guitars for a long time. Typically, it’s always routine maintenance: cleaning pots, adjusting truss rods, changing a tuner out, etc. Things get a little sketchy for me when it comes to the actual wiring: electrical stuff. It can be a little intimidating.
But look, have no fear. Learning how to solder is easy. Anyone can do it. You just have to be careful and get the right tools. It’s basically taping stuff together…but with hot blobs of melted metal.
When I got into my repair I didn’t know what kind of wire to buy for the replacment. So I did some digging. And here’s what you’ll need if you ever need to not only re-solder your input jack but change the wires to it as well.
Okay, I already had most of the tools needed for this: a wire stripper, solder, little screw drivers, and a butane soldering iron. I just had to go to Radio Shack to buy some wire.
But what wire? I couldn’t find the kind of wire anywhere. People would tell me, “buy some guitar wire.” What does that even mean? I can’t go to Radio Shack and say, “Yeah, are you in stock with guitar wire?”
No, what you’re looking for is something called “hookup” wire. Radio Shack has a lot of that stuff. When you go there you’ll see stuff like cable wire, intercom wire, etc. I’ve been told that any kind of wire will do, but I’m a little skeptical on that. The prevailing statement was to buy “hookup” wire. You’ll need something like “gauge 20.”
I just bought a small spool of it. You buy one spool and this’ll last you for the rest of your guitar workshop life.
If you don’t have the solder then you need to buy 60-40 rosin core solder. Yes, there are different types of solder. Get the kind I just said. And if you don’t already have some wire strippers then buy some of those as well. Trust me you’ll need some good wire strippers.
No, no, no.
Not that kind of stripper. I don’t mean you need to buy a skinny stripper. You need something to be able to strip away the outer coating of the wire. This will expose the wire so you can solder it to the post.
You’re probably thinking, “why don’t I just use a knife?” Look, whatever floats your boat.
But if you have a set of wire strippers you can just place the wire in the “20 gauge” slot, tug on it, and boom, you’re all set.
The outer coating is stripped away and you won’t have to slice open your thumb.
So, if you don’t already have some then go buy one of these. 
You’ll use them for other things in your house. Like when you’re using a hedge trimmer and you accidentally cut through your extension cord. Then you would use these to expose the wires so you can recrimp them together and not have to buy a brand new extension cord. Pay attention next time, stupid. (I’m talking to myself).
You’ll also need a soldering iron.
Soldering irons are actually pretty cheap. I bought a butane one for only 20 bucks. These are very easy to use and they refill just like cigarette lighters. Basically, you turn a little valve to open up the butane flow; then you light the tip of it, causing it to flame up; once the element is heated the flame will die out and the core will get nice and hot. Once the iron is hot enough you can solder the wires very quickly.
So here’s what I did.
1) I took off the back cover of my guitar to expose the wires. I also unscrewed the input jack cover so I could pull the whole jack & mounting ring out. When I did this I saw that only two wires were connected to it: a ground wire, and a hot wire. These wires were colored so I just followed them back to where they were connected.
2) I cut two long pieces of wires because I was going to change out both wires connecting into my jack. I used 20 gauge wire so I stripped the tips of them in the 20 gauge slot of my wire strippers.
3) I fired up my soldering iron. Once it was hot enough I went into the body of the guitar and heated up the existing solder that the two wires were attached to. This freed the wires up. I then pulled those wires out and did the same to the jack. I heated up the solder on the input jack and freed those wires up.
4) I ran the new wires through the jack hole that leads into the body (that sounds awesome). And here comes the tricky part. Some people have these contraptions that will hold certain wires in place or will hold certain objects stationary so they can work with both hands. I don’t have that. So what I did was held the wire in one hand and the soldering iron in the other. I heated up the existing solder until the new wire was embedded in it. I then let that cool for a couple of seconds. I then got some new solder and heated it up with the iron so that it dripped on to the top of the new wire. This makes a better seal. I repeated this for the second wire and where it went.
5) Once both of the new wires were placed to where the old ones were I just connected them to the input jack using the same technique: heat up the existing solder and place the new wire in that, topping it off with new solder.
Once all that is cooled, you’re done.
And that’s pretty much it.
Look, it’s very simple. All your doing is attaching a wire to something. Soldering is the metal glue that works in this case. It can be a little tricky when working with soldering cause you have to get into the body of the guitar while holding one wire and a soldering iron. It might take a little practice but you can get it. DON’T rest your soldering iron close to your guitar or on your counter. Soldering irons are hot and will burn things. Use common sense.
Learning how to work on your own guitar is a great skill to have. If you’re ever on tour you should bring these tools with you in case you have to do a quick repair job before a show. Believe me, it’ll happen to you.
I would’ve made a video for this whole thing but my camera no longer works and I did this whole repair job pretty quick because I wanted to get back in and record. But I found this nice video here of a guy doing pretty much the same thing that I did – with the exception of wiring it into the body.
