Soldered, Part 2

A bit more progress yesterday, although not without its frustrations.

I managed to get the remaining connections between the pots and switches done, with things getting increasingly fiddly in amongst the ever-increasing maze of wires. Then using the "helping hands" to suspend the cavity cover and preamp circuit over everything I'd already done, I started connecting up the wires from the preamp. The first one to do was the connection to the mini-switch that acts as an on-off switch for the preamp, so I soldered it into place and went to check it with the multimeter - only to find that the switch doesn't work properly. I thought I had tested it before I started soldering, but whether it was broken before or I've somehow broken it, it's definitely broken now! I've ordered a replacement, which happens to be black, to fit in with the knobs and pickup switch tip I already have.

I figured that while I had the cavity cover suspended in place, I might as well finish connecting up the preamp circuit - so all those connections are now done. Once the replacement switch arrives, I'll de-solder the broken one and solder in the new one, and then I'll be able to carefully remove everything from the cardboard and mount it into the guitar, hopefully without breaking any of the connections! Once it's all in, there will just be the pickups and battery clips to connect and I'll be able to find out if it all works...

The current, somewhat precarious state of affairs:

Also, I forgot to mention last time but I've had to be a little careful with replicating the circuit diagram as regards the two push-pull pots. I discovered (before I started soldering, thankfully) that the two I have (one that came with the guitar, one that I bought) work the opposite way to one another, which meant I had to reverse the connections on the phase switch from the circuit diagram to make sure it works the expected way (i.e. pushed down = in phase, pulled up = out of phase). Hopefully I've got my adjustments to the circuit right!

Soldered, Part 1

Soldering commenced at the weekend - the first time I've done any since I was at school, so progress was a little faltering at first! I started with a few of the ground wires, checking each connection carefully with the multimeter as I went along:

These all seemed to be OK, so I carried on with some more of the connections between them, including the shielded wire (salvaged from the scraps that came with the guitar) from the input jack to the volume pot, and the tone capacitor:

The soldering is a bit messy in places, but I've checked everything as I've gone along and it all seems fine. We'll see if it all works OK once it's finished and plugged in, but I'm happy with the results so far! There are a couple more wires to be added between these components, then I'll be able to connect up the preamp circuit, and after that, get it all mounted into the cavity and connect the pickups and battery clips.

De-soldered...

I've desoldered all the remaining connections in the Westone now; there weren't many left and it seemed to make sense to disconnect everything and start again from scratch. I'll be following the circuit diagram on westone.info once I start putting everything back together.

Once the desoldering was done, I mounted the switches, pots and jack onto a piece of cardboard, in positions corresponding to their mountings in the guitar - this will make it easier to solder the rather fiddly connections than trying to do it all with everything still in the cavity. I may have to do some or all of the pickup and battery clip connections once everything's mounted back in the cavity, but the more I can do with it all accessible the better. The preamp circuit is mounted to the back of the cavity cover, which may make those connections a little awkward, but I'd rather not remove it if I can help it, and I doubt it'd make much difference anyway.

Some photos: