Difficulty removing components from vintage electronics

[Enzo]

No need to speak for my wife, she speaks enough for ten people all by herself.

[Rhodesplyr]

I encounter this a lot working on Hammond preamps. I use a vacuum desoldering unit that I built myself using filtration components used in Hakko units.

First, you need an iron hot enough to melt the solder on the whole terminal. Second, sometimes the old solder has a layer of oxide on it that makes it hard to melt. My trick is to flow a small amount of new solder into the joint, which usually gets it to melt.

If I need to unwrap the old component lead, I cut it such that I can get a grip on the lead with hemostats or needle-nosed pliers and carefully unwind it without breaking off the terminal, which can be easy to do. A set of solder tools--the kind that look like dental tools--can be very helpful.

Of course, if the lead you need to remove has the leads of other components wrapped over it, you're either going to have to unwrap them all or simply leave the old lead there and wrap the new one around the others on the terminal.