Reddit reviews Hakko Adjustable Temperature ESD Soldering Station 60W 936

I highly recommend the Hakko 936 soldering iron Hakko 888 soldering iron, which is still actually available. It's hard to fathom how a $100 soldering iron could be that much better than a $20 one, but once you start doing anything more serious than just sticking some wires together, it's worth it.

As for other tools,

• Standard needle nose, dikes, and pliers set
  
• Tweezers - Additionally plastic ones if you're going to do PCB etching.
  
• Dental Picks - for positioning surface mount parts and pushing wires into molten solder.
  
• Wire strippers - You'll often see people using the combo wire stripper / crimpers. They're not as nice as a real pair of strippers.
  
• +/-12V power supply for basic analog electronics, 5V for digital work
  
• Breadboard
  
• Solder sucker - Copper braid is useful for the same thing, but given the choice of the two, I prefer the sucker to undo soldered joints.
  
• 30x Jewelers Loupe - Mostly useful for surface mount work, but pretty much all soldering is easier when you're able to look at it.
  
  As for components, I've been buying them piece-meal for years, so other's will probably be able to yield you a better recommendation for kits than anything I can find just from a quick search. I do mostly digital work, so as far as passives, my main stock is:
  
  
• 0.1uF and 100uF capacitors, 25V
  
• 100, 330, 1k, 4.7k, 10k, 100k, 1M resistors
  
  If I need any other resistor for a specific project, I'll tend to just buy an extra 10 and keep them in labeled coin envelopes.
  
  Random other pieces:
  
  
• Precut Breadboard jumper wires
  
• 7805 - 1A 5V linear regulators
  
• 1N4007 diodes
  
• 1N4148 small signal diodes
  
• 3V linear regulators if you do low power work (MSP430, etc)
  
• An Arduino - If not for real projects, I use this a lot to hack together crude digital signal generators to test other chips.
  
• LEDs - I found a good deal on bright red ones, but any will do
  
• push buttons, power switches, DIP switches (4 in a tiny package that fits in breadboards)
  
• Copper clad perf board - To make through-hole projects permanent. Be careful because this also comes without the copper pads, which is just more of a pain in the ass to use.
  
• Copper Solder braid
  
  Edit: Fixed the soldering iron model.
  
  Disclaimer: I'm using my Amazon Associate links for all of these, which always feel a little amoral and a conflict of interest, but really, if my apartment were to go up in flames and I could afford it, I'd buy every link on this list right now. Does anyone have strong opinions one way or the other on using them?

This guy is pretty well recommended. I just bought one and it's pretty friggen sweet.

I typed up a great list last night, then somehow, I managed to screw it up and lost the whole thing. So I decided to heck with it... and found a beer.

Let's try again.

Standard tools:

• screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, sockets, and most important, hollow point nut drivers. I got set from Sears on sale for about $20. You don't usually need the metric ones, but I love the zipper case they came in. It's worth the $20 alone if you ask me.
  
  Standard tools with more specific uses:
  
  
• You need a decent multimeter. It doesn't have to be fancy, I have a $300 Fluke that works just as good as a little cheapie that I got for free. And vice versa. The fluke does make somethings easier, like it's autoranging and has longer and better leads, but for just getting started, you should be able to pick up something decent for $20.
  
• You'll also need a soldering iron. Get a pencil, not a gun. Guns get too hot for most things. There are times when they are great in a pinball, like soldering coil lugs, but for most solder work, a cheap 25 watt pencil will get you by. I used cheapies for almost 10 years before I finally got a nice hakko and now I don't know how I ever lived without it.
  
• You'll also probably need to learn how to desolder stuff as well. There are a couple ways to do it. It takes practice, and I'd strongly suggest practicing soldering on junk boards before ever going at a pinball board. To desolder, there is the cheap way or you can spend a lot of money on a pricey desoldering system. I got one of these when I got my Hakko soldering iron. I love it, I don't know how I ever lived without it, but I also know that it's very expensive, especially if there are still a lot of other tools you don't have yet.
  
• We've already talked about you may need to replace some pins in your board connectors. You need two tools for that. First, you need a Molex Flat Pin Extractor. This lets you get the pins and wires out of the housings. You don't have to have it, you could cut the wires and use new housings, but those housings are increasingly difficult to find and it's not the housing that's a problem, it's the pins inside. This tool lets you extract the pin from the housing, cut it off, strip your wire and crimp on a new pin to slide back in to the housing.
  
• Speaking of crimping on a new pin... You're going to need Pin Crimpers for that. I have the yellow pair and they work great for most everything pinball. Yes, I technically also have some much more expensive ratcheting pin crimpers, but honestly, I tend to use these cheaper ones more. I don't really know why.
  
  Finally, pinball specific tools:
  
  
• Flexstones are used for cleaning contacts on switches. You want to be a little careful with these though... they're meant for some of the heavier switches. Often times, a business card will clean the gunk out well enough and doesn't risk destroying the contact points on the switch.
  
• Palnut removal tool is a very handy tool. Until you need one, it's kinda hard to describe what it's for, but trust me, you want one if you're going to try and take the plastics off your playfield posts to replace rubbers or change light bulbs. It's not really necessary, but for the money, it's a damn handy tool.
  
• Contact Adjuster is also a very handy tool. More for older EM games with lots of relays than for solid state games, but I mention it because Hulk, like many early solid state Gottliebs likely has a couple relays inside. It's unlikely you'll need this tool for Hulk, but it is a handy one to have around. Especially if you think you're going to be working on anything older.
  
  That should be about it. At least to get started. Depending on where you go from there, there are a bazillion things you could spend money on. But since you only have one machine right now, this basic list should take you a very long way. And don't kill yourself buying a ton of expensive specialty tools like fancy soldering irons if you don't think this is something you'll want to do a lot of. If you decide you like it and want to spend more money later, those are great upgrades.