Moog Etherwave Standard - ESPE01 Install Issue

Hello, 

Made my attempt at installing the ESPE01 on my Etherwave Standard today and encountered an problem while trying to remove the C6 capacitor. Picture is included... I seemed to have pulled up the trace while attempting to de-solder the old pin from the board. I have basic soldering skills but this is now beyond my confidence level. Does anyone have any insight on how bad this truly is and what steps I might take to fix it? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you!

It's certainly fixable, but it's going to require some care to not make more of a mess. If the  torn trace at any point becomes too damaged you can always run a fine wire back to the source end of the broken trace, which should be the common connection between C5, C6, C9, L13, Q3, Q5, and maybe some other components.  But first I would try to salvage the trace that's remaining by neatly rolling it out and gluing it back to the board incrementally with a little super glue.  Once it is bonded down you can (carefully !) scrape the green solder mask off the  torn end of the trace until you see bright copper.  Then run a short jumper of fine solid wire from the lower hole of C6 to the scraped end of the copper trace, and solder it at both ends.

If the lower hole for C6 is blocked (it looks like it might be) you should try to clear it out by adding solder and wicking it up or using a solder sucker.  Hopefully there is still a copper ring on the other side that will give your jumper something to bond to, but if the entire plated-thru hole for C6 is gone just run the jumper wire through and put a spot of glue on the back side.  The whole object is to extend that broken trace back to the hole and anchor it for strain relief.  From then on you will make the solder connection by simply tacking your mod wire to the point where the jumper enters the board hole.

If this fails then as I said you can run a fine insulated wire (preferably solid insulated wire-wrap wire) back to the board pads mentioned above.  If you do this the jumper wire should be kept short but also routed so that it doesn't lie directly over other traces.  The wire can then be spot glued to the board.

All of this assumes that you have the required soldering tools at hand for this modification including a decent pencil soldering iron, solder, flux (optional, but helps), and either solder wick or a solder sucker, or both. And you will want to have some very fine wire such as wire-wrap wire or you can often cut apart old computer or CAT5 cables to get some fine insulated wire that will work. 

Whenever you try to remove parts like this from a PC board it usually helps to add a blob of solder to the pad to ensure good heat transfer.  Once the pad is well heated you should be able to rotate the lead or at least wiggle it a bit to ensure that it's free before working it out.  The blob of solder can then be cleaned up with wick or suction.  You may already know all of this, but in light of what happened it is worth mentioning.

pitts8rh, thank you so much for this thorough response. Glad to hear that is seems fixable however i am less confident now than i was going into the project. I guess my next question for the forum would be if there was any leads on where to look as to getting this repaired (an additionally the espe01 installed). I fear continued tinkering could make the issue worse and would rather leave to someone more experienced. I appreciate the feedback!

-Chris

I don’t know where you are living, Chris, but there are two addresses in good old Europe, Wilco Botermans in the Netherlands and yers trooly in France, where you can send your EW in to get it fixed, the module correctly installed and an optimized tuning of the internal oscillators for less than Moog Music inc’s usual default bench fee.

"flux (optional, but helps)"  - pitts8rh

IMO, sufficient fluxing is the key to good solder joints.  It can make up for all kinds of sins, like a dirty iron, which you should wipe right before you solder.  Get a bottle of rosin flux off of eBay and use it religiously on every joint, tinning both sides before soldering them together.  I've done resoldering of fine pitch IC leads en masse with it and a wide chisel tip, as rosin flux increases wetting and surface tension way beyond bridging.

And you need a good solder sucker for this kind of work - one of those spring loaded plastic "soldapults" and not a lamer rubber bulb. 

But rosin flux is a bear to wash off.