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How hot is hot enough?

I am going to reterminate some speaker speaker cables and make some of my own.

I am assuming silver solder was used on the existing terminations. I will be touching up and resoldering the existing with silver solder and my new terminations will use silver solder as well.

I know part of this depends on what other metals (tin, lead...etc) are present and what the composition is. If I am using a solder from say....Audioquest, Cardas etc. How hot do I need to get? Can I use a high temp soldering iron or do I need to go to a butane torch similar to what Rat Shak sells. If I can use a soldering iron what temp and how many watts do I need to get to.

If this is successful, I may try to buy a "DIY" post, "Why so many For Sale" post or a "Which is better" post and provide my results. I will, of course, get plenty of consultation from the "experts" before posting one of these.

Thanks
doug28450

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driver
750 posts
 
I use a soldering station with an adjustable setting & usually set around 750. I like using Cardas solder as it flows nicely but those are just my personal preferences.

I would suggest experimenting with different solder types on various wire/termination configurations using a variety of heat ranges and take notes to see which works best for you.

You can go to the Tweaker's Asylum on AA & do a search for soldering. Here's some basic info too:
http://home.att.net/~joemacjr/diyproject/soldering.html
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