SolDer on

“Learn to use a soldering iron,” says Gary Moore tech Graham Lilley. “It’s a useful skill to have for repairing leads and output wires on a variety of guitars; replacing the 9-volt pedal battery connectors, which do wear out; and all sorts of connections that can break in the heat of a gig/rehearsal. Making your own leads is also a great money-saver and means that you could tidy up a pedalboard with cables of the proper length, rather than having to coil up any excess wire and pin it to the underneath part of your pedalboard, possibly creating an induction coil for picking up RF noise in your rig, which is never a good thing. And the shorter the overall cable length, then hopefully the better the guitar tone by the time it gets to the amp or PA system.”