c/electronics-repairers

Shoutout to the person who told me to check caps with a ESR meter not just a multimeter

I was working on a dead power supply from a 42 inch LG TV last week and kept scratching my head. Multimeter showed correct voltage on the big caps but the thing wouldn't power up. Borrowed a friend's ESR meter and found three caps that looked fine but read way high on ESR. Swapped them out for 25 cent replacements and it fired right up. Anyone else rely more on ESR testing than just looking for bulging tops?

Flux vs hot air for fine-pitch QFN removal - hot air wins every time

After wrecking a $120 board using flux and a tweezer to remove a QFN chip last Tuesday, I switched to hot air and had the replacement done clean in 90 seconds, so why are people still pushing the soldering iron method for these tiny packages?

Just realized I was wrong about vintage tube amps being too much hassle

I had a guy come into my shop, Mr. Patterson, with an old 1960s Fender amp that had been sitting in his basement for 20 years. He explained how his dad used to play it every Sunday and the simple way he talked about the sound made me rethink my whole approach to repairing older gear. Has anyone else had a customer change how you view a certain type of repair?

Had my best repair day in months last Tuesday

I was working on an old Bang & Olufsen turntable from the 1980s, and everything just clicked. The motor was running slow and I tracked it to a dried-up capacitor in the speed control circuit. I swapped it out with a 47uF 25V unit from my parts drawer and the speed locked right on. Has anyone else found that older audio gear is more cooperative than modern stuff?

Realized I've been using heat shrink wrong for 5 years

Was fixing a busted power cord on an old fan last week and noticed the heat shrink kept sliding off. Friend told me to roughen up the wire with sandpaper first before shrinking it down. Anyone else find little tricks like this that seem obvious after the fact?

Just realized I've been using the wrong tip on my soldering iron for years

Was working on a old Pioneer receiver last week and couldn't figure out why my joints looked like cold garbage. Took a picture and a guy on discord pointed out I'd been using a chisel tip for everything... switched to a fine conical and suddenly I'm actually making good connections on these tiny board traces. Anyone else stick with one tip out of habit?

That $20 RF probe I built from scratch beat my $400 oscilloscope for finding interference

I was working on this weird hum in a vintage receiver from the 70s last month, and my scope was showing noise but I couldn't pin down where it was coming from. One of the old guys on here mentioned building a simple RF probe with just a diode, a cap, and a resistor. I figured it was too simple to work, but I had the parts laying around so I soldered one up in about 20 minutes. Stuck it on my multimeter and started poking around the circuit board, and I found the bad solder joint on a filter cap within 5 minutes. The scope was telling me there was noise everywhere, but the probe helped me trace the exact path it was taking through the ground plane. Has anyone else had luck with these old school troubleshooting tricks that feel like cheating?

Just hit 5000 solder joints done this year at the shop

A customer told me my capacitor replacements looked sloppy and I changed how I do them

Guy picked up his old stereo amp and pointed out my solder joints were too big and messy on the caps I swapped. I switched to smaller tips and trim the leads shorter now, anyone else get called out on something that improved their work?

Unpopular opinion: those $20 multimeters are fine for 90% of what we do

I was working on a busted toaster yesterday and my Fluke was across town in my truck. Grabbed the Harbor Freight special from my kitchen drawer and it read the same continuity and voltage as the expensive one. I get needing precision for certain jobs but the gatekeeping about cheap meters is exhausting. Has anyone else found a cheap tool that actually works fine for basic fixes?

Pro tip: Don't buy cheap soldering flux from a dollar store

I grabbed a $1.50 flux tube from a discount bin last month to fix a bad joint on an old stereo receiver. The thing smoked up my whole garage and left a crusty white mess that wouldn't clean off with alcohol. Has anyone else had flux ruin a board like that or am I just unlucky?

Walked into a repair shop in Austin and saw someone fixing a 1980s receiver with a butter knife

Ngl I was just dropping off a dead power supply at this tiny shop off South Congress and the guy behind the counter was using a butter knife to pry open a Marantz receiver from like 1983. I asked him about it and he said the plastic spudger broke and he didn't feel like driving to the store. He actually got the case off clean without scratching anything which honestly impressed me. It got me thinking about how we all have those moments where we use whatever is on the bench to get the job done. I've used a paperclip to short test points more times than I can count. Has anyone else here gotten creative with random tools when your real ones were out of reach?

Spent $30 on a hot air station from Amazon, nearly set my bench on fire

I figured I'd save some cash and picked up one of those cheap 858D clones for a simple SMD capacitor swap. Worked fine for about ten minutes, then the element started glowing orange and the handle got so hot I had to drop it on my mat. That mat now has a permanent burn mark right next to a board I was trying to save. My buddy who does this for a living told me 'you get what you pay for' and I laughed it off, but now I get it. The heating element wasn't grounded right and the temperature readings were off by like 80 degrees. Has anyone else had a budget tool go bad on them mid-job?

Almost fried a $2,000 board because I skipped one step

I was swapping a power supply on a Commodore 64 in my garage last Tuesday... forgot to discharge the CRT first. My hand slipped and the probe hit a trace near the flyback transformer - saw a blue arc and smelled ozone instantly. Managed to kill the power before anything caught fire, but it took me three hours to confirm the board was still good with a multimeter. Has anyone else gotten too confident and skipped safety checks? I keep a discharge tool on my bench now but man that was close.

Using a hot air station to fix a cracked solder joint saved me 2 hours

Had a laptop that would randomly shut off. I spent an hour with a soldering iron trying to reflow the GPU pins, no luck. Then I grabbed my 858D hot air station at 350C, hit the area for 30 seconds, and it fired right up. Been stable for a week now. Anyone else find hot air way better for BGA rework than an iron?

That $200 microscope I bought for board work was junk

Picked up a cheap digital microscope off Amazon for inspecting solder joints on phone boards. Spent $200 and it had so much lag I couldn't even see where my iron was touching. Returned it after one disaster repair where I bridged three pins on a charging IC. Anyone else get burned by those no-name USB scopes?

Figured out why my soldering iron tips kept oxidizing so fast

I was going through a tip every couple weeks on my Hakko station and it was driving me nuts. Figured it was cheap tips or maybe my flux was bad. Turns out I was leaving the iron on at full temp for hours between uses. I'd walk away, get lunch, come back, and it just sat there at 700 degrees with nothing to do. Read a post on here about turning it down to standby temp around 300 when idle and using tip tinner before putting it back in the holder. Tried that for a month and my tip still looks new. Cost me maybe $30 in wasted tips before I sorted it out. Anyone else run into this or have other tricks for tip longevity?

Had a week where everything I touched broke worse than before

Last Tuesday I took in a 2017 Samsung TV with a simple blown fuse, and by Friday I had somehow killed the power board AND the main board trying to fix it. (like, two different boards fried on two different days, I still don't get how). Has anyone else had a repair week that just snowballed into disaster, or was it just me?

Pulled an old Zenith TV apart last week and got a surprise

I took in a 1970s Zenith console from a customer in Oak Park last week, just needed a new power supply cap. But when I opened it up, someone had replaced the original flyback transformer with one from a completely different model, wired it in with speaker wire and electrical tape. That thing must have been running like that for decades without anything catching fire. Has anyone else run into a backyard repair job that made you shake your head?

That $60 hot air rework station was the worst purchase I've made

Bought it off eBay to save cash and the thing couldn't even hit 200c consistently. Has anyone found a reliable budget station under $150 that actually works?

Pro tip: don't buy those cheap soldering station tips off Amazon

Wasted $35 on a 40 pack of tips that were supposed to fit my Hakko. They didn't. The first one oxidized in about 10 minutes and the second one wouldn't even heat up. Shoulda just spent the extra $12 on genuine ones from the supply house. Anyone else burn money on those knockoff tip sets?

Had to choose between a hot air station and a soldering iron for an old DVD player board

I was fixing a Panasonic DVD player from 2004 for a neighbor last weekend. There was a cracked capacitor near a plastic connector, and I worried the hot air would melt it. I went with my Hakko soldering iron and a pair of tweezers instead, taking it slow. The cap came off clean and the new one went in without any damage. Has anyone else had to pick between tools on a tight spot like that?

Just saw the difference a capacitor swap made on an old receiver

Picked up a Pioneer SX-780 at a flea market in Denver for $40 last Saturday. Got it home and the left channel was weak with a hum. Recapped the power supply board with some Nichicon caps from Mouser, took about 2 hours, and now it sounds clean as a whistle. Anyone else notice how much life these old units have after a basic recap?

Stumbled on a stat that shocked me about capacitor failure rates

I was reading through a repair log from a shop in Austin last night and saw that nearly 40% of dead power supplies they get in have at least one bad cap. That number seems crazy high to me, but after thinking about all the blown caps I've pulled from old monitors, it kinda makes sense. Where do you guys usually see the worst capacitor problems in your repairs?

Hit 500 board repairs in my shop last Tuesday

I passed 500 board-level repairs last Tuesday on a old Samsung TV power supply. It surprised me because I never actually counted them before, I just fix stuff as it comes in. That number made me realize how much I've learned since I started doing this out of my garage in Des Moines four years ago. Has anyone else tracked their repair count and been surprised by the number?