Soldering station: finally

I have wanted a soldering station for the longest time - I enjoy doing hardware mods for my video games stuff, among other things, and for the longest time I’ve made do with trash-tier equipment because I could never afford anything better. Heck, since we’ve been in Australia, I’ve been making do with a cheap 50W Jaycar special with a fat tip, and nearly screwed up the audio mod on my OSSC because of it (and my shaky hands).

A popular YouTuber recommended these cheap KSGER things from Asia, and it’d been on my todo list for some time. They warm up quick, survive heat-dumps on large ground planes reasonably well (at least as well as a low-end Hakko for about 3x the price), the circuit inside seems sensible (though there’s no telling if they’ve changed it since), and they take fairly standard tips.

But I like instant gratification, so it was a toss-up… spend significantly more on the Jaycar thing that I can have now, spend about the same on a low-end Hakko from an Aussie seller and wait about a week, or wait 4~6 weeks for a cheap one to come from Asia. I thought I’d found a good compromise: an eBay seller in QLD selling one for about $40 more than the cost of buying one on AliExpress. Purchased!

In a deviation from my normal (click Pay Now and then press my nose up against the window waiting), I didn’t look at it for about two weeks, when I got an email from the seller: “it’s shipped, here’s your tracking information”. Not off to a great start, but when I clicked on it, the fucking thing’s coming from Singapore anyway.

So at this point I’m pretty livid, I paid a premium because the item was listed as being in QLD, so I pushed the seller for a please-explain, and didn’t really get a satisfactory answer. If I’d wanted to wait a month for it to come from Asia I would have just bought a cheap one! Plus, to make matters worse nothing had updated on the tracking for about two weeks, and some stupid form-email about COVID delays isn’t going to cut it when I’m this angry. So I waited until the last possible moment, and opened a case with eBay.

Luckily, it arrived today - I ordered it on the 19th of April, no big deal - so all’s well that ends well I suppose, but I’ll refrain from leaving feedback for this sonofabitch too because I’ll have nothing nice to say and their retalitory feedback might ruin my 100% positive rating.

Horsham, VIC, Australia

Author:

fwaggle

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Location:

Horsham, VIC, Australia

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