Quickly replacing parts

[koen]

How do you guys do that? There are several wires I need to unsolder before I can take the eyelet board out to swap out/replace parts. Either on the tube side, or on the pots/input side. This way I can carefully turn the board 90 degrees, and lift it up slightly to be able to access both sides. And then put everything back to try it out. There must be a more clever way to do this

[Alex R]

You mean like a Fender eyelet board? If so, just heat up the eyelet and lift the wire out from above.

But a lot of times, yes, you have to desolder a lot of wires around the edge and note where they go before you can get the board up and get at the underside. Prime example, Mesa boards.

[koen]

You mean like a Fender eyelet board?

Well yes, this is the 5E3 subforum, right?

[Enzo]

I guess I am confused why one would need to pull the eyelet board OUT of the amp. If I need to change a resistor, I heat the solder and pull the resistor lead from the hole. I can then either suck the solder from the hole, or melt the solder and poke a hole in it so there is room for the new resistor lead.. trim and shape the new part leads and solder it in. The board never moves.

[koen]

Good point. Some holes however have wires on the bottom of the eyelet board, and they could disconnect unnoticed if you don't see both sides of the board.

[martin manning]

...which is why you want to make sure that the under-board wires are hooked around to the top, and the top-of-board component leads, not so much.

[Enzo]

Generally underside wires have their little end poking up and bent over. It usually doesn;t go anywhere, and I have had no problem losing wires to the underworld. I am just pulling a part from the hole, not having a wrestling match in there. If somehow one did become detached, I'd know from the amp performance not being right, and could simply pull the loose wire out of the board sandwich and resolder it up on top.


The less one does to the part board, the fewer opportunities there are to screw something up. Unsoldering and then resoldering 15 wires to prevent the possibility of one coming loose underneath seems unlikely to benefit. That is only my opinion.

Now one special case - sometimes they want to connect two eyelets together, so they ran some part down one hole, and then used the remaining lead length to go over to the second hole. One discovers they did that when unsoldering the part and it still won;t come out. In that case I snip off the old part, leaving the rest of the old wire to bridge the two eyelets, then install the new part into the hole. Still the board remains in place.

[koen]

Thanks everyone, all good points and I'll keep the board in place. And in those case I need to reach the bottom side, I could just detach the inputjacks and potmeters, so that side can be turned over.

[Enzo]

SOme ground wires might hold you up.

There are occasions when I have to flip a printed circuit board - the solder is on the bottom after all - and rather than disconnecting the wires to the pots and jacks, I just take off the nuts and let them dangle. The pots and jacks, not the nuts. 8 or 10 nuts is a lot easier than 15-20 wires coming off.

But circuit boards are different beasts from eyelet boards.