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from ATX over on TalkBass - thanks Nick!
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1. Use an iron that's hot enough. Most people recommend using low wattage irons to avoid damaging parts, burning traces, etc. In reality too small an iron is more likely to cause damage. with a hot iron, you can have the part soldered in seconds, before the heat has a chance to spread through the part. With too cold an iron, you'll be sitting there waiting for the part to get hot enough, while the heat soaks through the whole thing. I have a 15W a 30W and a 70W. I use the 15 if I'm doing a lightweight pc-board or thin wire. detail stuff only. 30W is a good general purpose. Not too hot for the lightweight stuff, if you're reasonably quick, and big enough for most jobs. The 70W is ideal for bigger stuff like soldering to the body of a pot, or to ground a tremolo, etc. (I'm often lazy and use the 70W for small stuff too. It works awesome, but you need to work stupid fast not to overheat things.) Oh yeah. I just use cheap junk irons btw. Some of the best functioning soldering irons I've bought have been <$10 department store clearance bin specials. $15 Radioshack irons are fine. IMO "soldering stations" are a huge waste of money. A 30w iron doesn't need a temperature control for this kind of work in hobiest volumes. There are great ones available for doing high volume work but they're big money. A $70 weller station isn't really a whole lot better than the $15 Ratshack pencil if you're just doing occasional repairs and stuff.
2. Clean the tip. It should be shiny with a thin coat of solder (not blobs hanging off). I use a wet rag, and wipe it regularily to remove any bits of slag or excess solder that collects on the tip. After a while, especially if you do long jobs where the iron has time to get a bit overheated little chunks of the tip will corrode away, usually in a big puff of white smoke. At this point you should probably replace the tip, though I usually get a tiny bit more life out of them by filing them smooth(though usually once they've been filed they won't last long)
3. Heat the work, not the solder. Usually if I'm soldering a pot. I'll loop the wire through the hole on the tab, and I'll touch the soldering iron to the bottom with just enough solder on the tip that it wets the joint and gives good contact with both the wire and the tab. After about a half a second I'll apply the solder to the top side. the wire and tab should be hot enough that they'll melt the solder, which will nicely wick onto the surfaces giving a nice glossy finish, and the strongest most reliable connection you're going to get with ordinary solder.
4. Not too much solder. If you want your work to look like part of a crappy asian sweatshop bass, the key is cheap solder, and too much of it. You don't need a blob for it to be strong. It probably won't do much harm on its own, but it's ugly, and can sometimes hide a bad connection which would be clearly noticible with a proper amount of solder.
5. As I mentioned, use good solder. The stuff I use most often is kester "44" rosin core, 63Pb/37Sn (60/40 works fine for me too). I like the really thin .031" stuff, but I like to do some fairly fine electronics work too. For soldering pots and pickups the gauge doesn't really matter. The key is rosin core, not acid. If you want to test the stuff you have, just solder some scrap wires together. You should easily get a nice shiny surface if your technique is anything this side of terrible. If it comes out looking a matte grey colour, I'd just pitch it out and buy some decent solder. Kester 44 is a good all around solder. I don't bother with all the no-clean stuff. I've never found it works as well, and for this kind of thing, a little bit of flux residue isn't going to do any harm. The little rolled up 10 foot chunks that come with cheap soldering kits are often of the junk category.
Whew.. that got a lot more in depth than I intended. I guess can just copy it off to a web page and add some pictures to make it a proper tutorial.
-Nick
Edit: Another detail in step 2: Don't do anything with your soldering iron except soldering. If you melt plastic, burn wood, etc. the solder won't properly wet it. If the tip's black, it won't work properly. First try wiping clean, if that doesn't work try blobing lots of solder on to see if the flux will clean the crap off. Flick the excess off onto your wet rag (or workbench if you don't care about the little brown burn marks) If that doesn't work, you can buy tip cleaner which works really well. I just use a tin of flux. It'll work almost as well, and you can use it for other stuff too. Just stick the tip into the can for a second, avoiding the puff of smoke, and it'll probably come out nice and shiny.
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