Soldering mini jack plugs

Not sure whether this is the right place for this, but here goes. I have to make up a cable to connect a 5 pin DIN to a 3.5mm stereo mini jack bought from Maplins.

Does anyone know how to tell which is left and right on the jack. Both connections are the same length, One is joined to what looks like the central core, so would that go to the tip and if so is it left or right?

Any help most welcome. TIA John

Reply to
John Edgar
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The Tip is Left, the middle is Right and the sleeve is Ground.

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Reply to
Sparks

Left is tip, right ring, screen body.

With all those sort of connectors that started out mono like jacks or indeed DIN, the old mono 'hot' is left. As a rule.;-)

You ok for the 5 pin DIN connections?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Great and thanks for the replies. You must excuse me for being so stupid, but I assume that the tip is the central core when looking at the top of the plug. It's a bit difficult to work it out. For the 5 pin DINS I have circuit diagrams and pictures. It is to connect to a Quad

33 and I have all the original stuff, so I think I can work that out.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Reply to
John Edgar

From my experience, yes - I take it you don't have a meter handy then! (And replies are supposed to go under the last persons reply ;-)

Sparks...

Reply to
Sparks

Yes - the 'tip' is the end of the plug; the 'tip', as it were ;-) To be sure which one of the solder tags it's connected to (it's this middle one in all the 3.5mm jacks I've ever soldered, but that's a sample size of mere tens), just use a multimeter, or lamp/LED-n-resistor and battery, to be quite sure of the continuity. 'Ring' is the next one up, as it forms a, well, 'ring'; and is typically the other solder tag visibly insulated from the main body. 'Sleeve' equates to 'body', or 'main lump o'metal'; all too often it doesn't get a solder tag of its own, tho' with luck there'll be a small hole a bit below the optimistically-named 'cable grip' thru which you can pass, and then solder, the twisted-together screen conductors.

Don't feel bad if you totally najjer the first plug you solder up, and end up cutting it right off and using a fresh one. There's a reason RS, Canford, and maybe even Maplin sell 'em in bags of 5 ;-) - they're a fiddly little "()%£&("! to solder up and keep all the bits wot should be insulated from each other reliably insulated. Often there's very little room to leave the bit of heatshrink sleeving you want far enough away from where you're soldering, as the body of the plug is pretty short so you want to be back to the unstripped cable jacket within no more than

1cm of the point at which you solder. It can be easier to strip back too far, and use one wider, adhesive-lined chunk of heatshrink to go around the cable as it exits from the plug, allowing you to strip back beyond the exit point.

HTH - Stefek

Reply to
Stefek Zaba

Yeah they are so cheap it's the only way to get a reasonable price tag on 'em.

Naw, fiddly is 8 pin lemo or right angled single pin lemo (the solder point is down ahole about 2mm dia) or those surface mount "honda"(?) things found on the bottom of mobile phones with a pitch of 0.5mm.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice
[regarding 3.5mm jacks]

As with many things I find that this varies enormously with the brand (i.e. cost) of the plug bought. Cheapest things with black plastic or PVC barrels are the worst generally, and I've had more than one of that type, 3.5mm, 1/4inch, phono and so on actually disintegrate (bits falling off), either during soldering or after a few days/weeks of use.

The cheaper plugs (plastic or metal) also usually have shiny silver terminals. IME these will not take solder unless you use loads of heat and probably have at least two or three attempts to let the flux get at things. A way to help is to scratch the silver stuff off as well as possible. I use a sharp pointy thing (broken blade of penknife) but anything which makes a decent scratch should do. The quicker you can solder, the better the rest of the plug holds together. Oh yes, and the spacing of the "terminals" is often such that the connector to the ring is in severe danger of shorting on the barrel.

The mid-price connectors with "gold plating" (of a couple of atoms thick usually) are often of no better construction, but do at least take solder relatively well.

And then there are the expensive types. There's no way they'll make the sound any better, but they are usually built a bit more robustly and have decent terminals which positively drink the solder. My favourite has to be Neutrik, but then I do use a lot of XLRs and 1/4inch, and it's worth paying the best part of three quid for a plug which solders easily, never falls apart and has a decent cord grip. Haven't seen them for a bit, but Deltron used to have a Neutrik XLR clone that was just as good for a few pennies less.

But I digress. I haven't used a Neutrik 3.5mm jack so I can't comment.

Hwyl!

M.

Reply to
Martin Angove

Dave

Reply to
dave stanton

Thanks for the replies. I'll give it a go and see what happens. It's a while, like 20 years or so, since I had my soldering iron out, but it still works and I have some solder, so here's hoping! John

Mart> >

comment.

Reply to
John Edgar

Like falling of a bike you never forget how to do it. Just remember that the hot end of the soldering iron is just as hot now as it was then... B-)

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Takes a while to acquire those "don't catch it when you knock it off the bench" reflexes, but they do stay with you for life.

(Off to put new cells in the cordless razor and my 144MHz handheld. £2.49

*each* from Maplins for solder tagged AAs.)
Reply to
Huge

I've had good results soldering to AA cells. If you do it right, you touch the cell with a hot iron for under half a second.

Simply with a new scrubbing pad, as used for dishes, and washed hands (grease is BAD!), scour off the area you are going to attach to. Now, with the soldering iron tip horizontal, and the soldering iron clamped in something, at almost the same moment, tin the soldering iron forming a nice thick blob, and then tap the cell on the iron. Now, do all the other cells this way. (if done right, you should be able to place your finger on the solder within

3 seconds, and only feel a slight warmth) Then, take the wire you will use to connect it, arrange it so that it wants to spring downwards through the solder blob on the cell, and repeat the process.
Reply to
Ian Stirling

One thing you might like to note is that the Quad 33 input levels are very much lower than most modern gear, so be careful not to overload them. Ie, something like a CD player might bash it into the middle of next week without an attenuator between output and input.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

My unfavourites are the ones where the whole kaboodle melts during soldering. The trick I've adopted is to place the plug in a socket or vice-versa. That gives a better chance that when it solidifies everything is in the right place (unless you melt both plug and socket, of course :)

Chris

Reply to
chris_doran

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