Fender junk

[passfan]

Took a super sonic in to check that had two preamp tubes not lighting up. Traced it to bad heaters and replaced the tubes with working ones. No worky so out comes the chassis and not seeing anything obvious I start looking for cold solder points and ............ Wow ......... I find the plate connection on one of the output tubes was never soldered. I start looking around and find a couple more points that are questionable and signs of someone retouching other points and possi le even some repairs. Then after questioning the owner I realize that he's the original owner and the work had to have been done before Fender boxed it up to send out.........wow

[tubeswell]

Yikes! Chinese-made?

[passfan]

Not sure. I couldn't find a Chinese label anywhere. The 6l6 with the Unsoldered plate was turning black on the inside of the glass though. I'm surprised it worked

[selloutrr]

If its newer production they are made in mexico by old ladies. It's really common to find missing solder points I wish I could say it's rare but if it's new it's the first thing I look for in a fender

[randalp3000]

Kind of funny, I have two amps I bought used by a very popular boutique builder that both had a wire not soldered on a pot lug. One of them I got directly from said builder as a demo that he went through before shipping.

here's one of them

[IMG577]http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff388/randalp3000/amps/IMAG0315_zpsab640787.jpg[/img]

[Leo_Gnardo]

Kind of funny, I have two amps I bought used by a very popular boutique builder that both had a wire not soldered on a pot lug. One of them I got directly from said builder as a demo that he went through before shipping. here's one of them

Whoo, Jupiters! Throw money into it, maybe it sound better. But can't be bothered to find & fix an unsoldered wire. Fooey! Good on ya for making it right.

FWIW I wouldn't solder to the back of those Alpha or similar pots with anodized covers. They just don't want to accept solder - with some scraping & flux & lots of heat they eventually do, but it's such an unsure way of getting to ground. Even more so with an aluminum chassis. Just fly a wire to a for-sure good grounding spot.

[Cantplay]

If you sand first, flux it, and scratch the metal through the flux with the hot tip it seems to stick for me.

Otherwise the cadmium plating on most pots seems to repel solder. Lead solder is a must for this as it 'wets' much better.

John

[Blackburn]

My method for soldering to those is to torch the shit out of them after removing the cover and after something like 30 seconds of flame, it burns through and you're good to go. Works for me.