believe me, i go thru miles and miles of desoldering braid, and own stock in solder suckers.

every time i breadboard anything tho, i can never get anything to work right, and if by some weird circumstance i do, i get so much noise and crap it's hard to hear what it does.
maybe (probably) i'm an idiot.
i've destroyed a lot of veros over the years trying to fix things, and have gotten really good at REPAIRING lifted rails, and learned things...
like...NEVER "flow" the solder out onto the rail. it makes debugging impossible.
never use more solder than you absolutely need to.
always leave about a half inch of component leads sticking out the bottom til you're sure it works.
never forget to trim those very leads when you're done, either!!
socket ANYTHING suspect...diodes, caps, transistors, ic's..
don't use SIP sockets, better to cut up machined ic sockets (i get the 6 pin DIP sockets for cheap cuz nobody uses them and cut 'em in half)...sip sockets will FAIL.
use roach clips for heatsinks...and when ya get it working and are satisfied, solder components in (other than ic's)
stuff like that.
so... is solder really a food group?
