New to this building thing

Hello fellow players! Excited to start my JB-4 bass build, but am worried about soldering as I've got zero experience.

Hi
It's not nearly as hard as it sounds. Buy a decent soldering iron and solder from JayCar. I had never soldered before my first kit and ended up re-wiring it from scratch with no probs. Watch a few "how to solder" vids on youtube , you'll be fine

Hi Xwing. You'll be great at soldering, easy as pie. you'll need some more kits to practice on too

Hi mate and welcome, I have a few tips in my strat rewire Benson pickup thread, link in my signature.
Mainly, keep the tip of the iron clean, it greatly helps in getting the solder to flow as opposed to being a molten blob that sits on the iron and doesn't transfer to the lug or wire.

Give it a go and ask plenty of questions, you'll be fine, enjoy the journey

XWing - not too many solders on a JB-4, so don't stress... Anyway, welcome to the party - ask any questions - we were all newbies once.

Welcome X-wing

welcome to the forum Xwing, have a bit of soldering practice before you attempt the real thing. As said there aren't many wire connections on a JB-4. Start a build diary and let us know your build plans. Ask any questions you have there, don't rush the build and good luck !

Welcom Xwing - just echoing everyone else's comments but the key for me was just mucking around soldering bits of wire to a bit of metal just for practice, and obviously lots of YouTube videos (and only when I get at least three different ones saying roughly the same thing do I think I'm on the right track!). I'm still very hit or miss, but when I get it right I feel like a fair dinkum fully qualified electrician!!

Welcome XWing. Lots of good advice already and only thing I can add is that the iron needs to be really hot and if it has more than one setting, go with the hottest most of time.

From memory this kit has a pre-wired control plate so you only have to connect a few PUP wires plus earth wire from the bridge. It will probably take longer for the iron to heat up than to do the job.

Hi Aadamdun, welcome to the forum, how much wood working skills have you got and can you solder wire joins ?

probably a TL or ST kit to start on, but depends on your experience and what sort of guitar you like

EDIT looks like you deleted your post !

I guess that depends on what style you like. I probably wouldn't try a veneer topped kit as my first but it depends on your level of "handyness"

Sorry didn't mean to high jack this thread so I started my own.