It might just be me, but I do not like throwing away kit that has hardly anything wrong with it. A few weeks ago I bought another Libec ZC 9 Pro cable. My original one had started to cause lenses to zoom in and out in a random fashion, which is not conducive to a good humoured wildlife cameraman. On taking it apart I found that one of the 8 fine wires on the lens connector had come adrift. If I were to be picky I would say that it wasn’t a very good soldering job to start with, but I have had good mileage out of this unit with a fair amount of abuse thrown in, so I should not complain.
Unfortunately for me it was the middle wire of the 8 that had come adrift, the purple one. Now, I am no soldering expert, in fact I would say that it is one of those activities for which I have no natural aptitude… like country dancing, snooker or knitting, all of which make no sense to me at all. Nevertheless, I got stuck in and de-soldered all of the wires.
3 hours later I gave up, realising that the wildlife cameraman’s reputation for being able to fix anything was on the line. I had also dropped the soldering iron at one point, and (I think it was a coincidence that I was listening to the cricket at the time) caught the thing by the hot iron end. Not a good idea, and as I rushed to a sink of cold water I decided to call it a day.
I’m sure it would have been easier to have started with a completely new connector that wasn’t partially covered in solder blobs, but I will never know. Some things are best left to experts.