[acropolite (Phil)]

OK lots of tips, probably none of them will help you much.

here's what I do.

Firstly tin the connector pins, don't overdo the heat but make sure the solder has taken properly, your tinned pins shouldn't look blobby, nor should you have melted the plastic.

When you're soldering make sure the solder, wire or pin and iron all contact simultaneously, don't try to transfer the solder to the iron and then to the wire.

Remove the clips on the wire ends, strip a little back and tin those ends, once again make sure the solder flows in to the wire strands and isn't just a blob on the wire, don't get the individual strands seperated, keep them tightly wound.

Don't use any more heat on the wire than necessary as the insulation will run.

Try to get all the wires tinned with only a couple of mm of bared wire, if necessary trim a little of the wire off to give 1-1.5mm after you've tinned them.

Once you have the wires and pins tinned, carefully add a little more solder to the wires (or pins), quickly this time, if you do the job quickly enough there will be a little flux transferred with the solder.

If you're really clever it's possible to melt the solder on the iron and get a little of the flux transferred to the wire without adding any more solder to the wire

Mount the socket in something to hold it steady and place each wire on the pin and apply minimal heat to melt the solder and complete the connection. Do the rearmost pins first nothing worse than trying to solder in a tight spot behind wires you've already soldered.

If you use this method, you will have the socket held by something other than your hands, one hand free for the wires, the other the soldering iron.

The trick is getting a little flux left on one of the 2 surfaces so that when you apply heat the joint fuses neatly.

Works every time for me, I've been doing it this way for 30+ years.