Reddit mentions of Nulink153; Deluxe Series Desoldering Pump Solder Iron Remover Sucker Hand Tool [Blue, Plastic] [Heavy Duty]

Using solder wick on through-holes is terrible. I use this solder sucker. It's a bit on the pricey side, but the silicone rubber tip gives it surprising suction despite being small enough to operate one-handed. I used to use this, which is cheap but... cheap. It broke after a while. Worked well enough before then, though.

The soldering station you're looking at will be fine for replacing capacitors. Its adjustable, which will come in handy when you want to further your skills. Get some extra tips, and find some fine point ones. I like to use long conical ones, as well as long small flat ones.

As other posters have said, you want to practice on something you don't necessarily want to keep. Find something cheap from a thrift store and take it apart.. an old clock radio, vcr, something of that sort. Then identify the capacitors and give it a go. Once you get the hang of it, try on the genesis.

Solder - you want some 60/40 solder (60%tin 40%lead). Stay away from acid core, its not for electronics. Find this in a thin gauge, you'll have a better time with it.

Flux - nice to have around. On some joints, the old solder doesn't really like to flow all that well. You can put some flux on it, and it'll flow a bit better. Use it on the new joint as well. There's several different types, and you can get lost in it, but you really want a liquid or gel type flux that is "no clean". I still give it a rinse with alcohol and a brush after I'm finished, but it cleans up way easier than regular flux. Here's what I use : MG Chemical's Paste flux

You will also need something to remove the old solder from the holes. Tools like this Vacuum pump and desoldering wick like Desoldering wick are good for removing the old solder.

As for the actual removal and replacement of the capacitors, I usually heat up one side from the bottom of the board, and rock the cap so it slides out a bit, then do the other side, working the cap out a little at a time. After that I clear the hole with a vacuum pump (while heating the solder up, get the vacuum pump as close as possible and press the button) or the desoldering wick (put the wick on top of the solder, then heat both, pull the soldering iron and the wick off at the same time, lest you pull up traces - This takes a bit more practice to perfect)

Make sure you put the new capacitor in correctly. Electrolytic caps are polarized. You want to make sure positive goes to positive and negative to negative. Look at the cap before you remove it. Most boards are marked, but no reason to risk the board being marked wrong.

Make sure the caps you're using are the proper rating. A general rule is the capacitance needs to be the same (farad rating), and the voltage rating needs to be at least the rated, but can be higher with no ill effects.

Its late and I'm rambling. Hope this helps.

I have https://www.amazon.com/NulinkTM-Deluxe-Desoldering-Remover-Plastic/dp/B00U1SFNYE/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1486421878&sr=8-9&keywords=solder+sucker. It's big but works very well.

I soldered my ergodox PCBs with my hakko set to 650 F (about 340-350 C). Just don't keep the iron on the switch solder posts any longer than necessary. Basically, if you don't have a perfect joint in 3 seconds, you did something wrong. The traces are small enough on keyboard PCBs that you probably don't even need that high of a temp, but I think it helped to make nice shiny joints when using lead-free solder.

The same temps worked with a separate de-soldering pump that I have that is similar to this one. I haven't used the integrated kind that you linked to before. Over 400C, you are risking burning up small traces and delicate components, but you are probably okay if you work fast. If you really wanted to control temp on that cheap desoldering iron, you could plug it in through a variable transformer.

Soldering components to a huge, thick PCB ground plane on my tesla coil kit, on the other hand... that was more of a challenge. I dialed it up to 750F (400C), and should have been using extra flux.

The Soldapullt is fantastic. If people havn't used one, then it makes sense that they are steering you towards the bargain bin. Get the Edsyn. The large diameter barrel makes a massive difference in the volume of air that this thing draws in. I likewise had the same concern as you regarding tip degradation so I picked up a couple spare tips when I bought mine. I'm still on the first tip though. For the record, silicone begins to degrade above 300C (it doesn't melt per se), while PTFE's melting point is 326C. I've never had a jamming issue and the one handed operation of flip and bump (it has integral bumper for this) makes it a fast workhorse.

I suppose if you're really trying to save dough, you can get a $6 knockoff:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K72SBWY

or this $9 one if you want spare tips:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U1SFNYE

UK cheapie:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ZBUCNE0

Can't vouch for the durability of any of these clones though.

You may need to swap out your pump. The first one I tried didn't work worth a damn either, but then I bought one that was about three times the size on Amazon and it works beautifully. This is the one I bought.

I use this iron for everything I do. It has basic thermal control and the iron has a good selection of tips that you can buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000AS28UC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_divAyb3066AWC. I would definitely get fine point tips. Here is a vacuum that I use as well for desoldering: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U1SFNYE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_LkvAybGPPWMF1.

Whatever iron you have now will probably be fine, but definitely will want precision tips if you can find them.

This it?

Or this?

If not here is a good wick and sucker

I ordered one of these. Should I cancel the order?

Soldering is a good skill to have, in general.

And if you're careful, there's not much you can screw up.

Watch a YT tutorial or two and you'll be good to go.

For tools you'll eventually want what is in this kit, but probably not that kit itself.

I bought a Weller WLC100 40 watt kit (definitely get a norrower ST2 or ST3 tip as well), a solder sucker tool (you can use desoldering wick, but the solder sucker is worth the money), a Helping Hands and 60/40 rosin-core solder.

In addition, I like using tip tinner, a wire tip cleaner like this because I found that using a wet sponge reduced the tip temperature too much.

Also, solder fumes are not great so only do this is in a well-ventilated area. I like to use a small fan to blow the fumes away from my face.

The only thing you'll need to do is desolder/clip the existing swtich and wire up the replacement. You don't have to mess with the pots or caps unless you want to.

Phostenix Tele diagram page.

edit: fixed solder type

Continued.....

Ok, so for the electronics:

Get a solder sucker for all the electronics work. This guitar has leaded solder, and a lot of what you find in stores now is lead-free. Mixing those two can cause bad solder joints, so it's best to remove all the old solder and start fresh (assuming the solder lugs and eyelets hold up).

I'd start with testing the pickups to see if they work. This is easy - just hold the leads on a cable plugged into an amp (one on the tip, one on the sleeve) and they'll pass signal if they work. You can either tap the pole pieces with a screwdriver or anything that sticks to a magnet, or hold the pickup to the strings of another guitar. You can also take ohm readings of the coils, but this tests the entire unit to see if it generates signal.

After testing the pickups, I'd replace the jack and battery connections, tag all the switches and pots with electronics cleaner, and test all these parts with a multimeter to see that they work. This would isolate any electronics issues to just the circuitry on the board.

That circuit is actually fairly simple, but you have some components that might give you problems. Those metal cylinders with three orange wires coming out look to be old school transistors. The problem is, I don't see any markings on them to let you know what variety they are or which leg is which. This means that if you have to rebuild the circuit, you can't replace these or lose track of where the legs are connect. You also have to just hope that they still work. If you get it all together and it still doesn't have signal, you can never know with 100% certainty that the problem is or isn't these parts.

Past that, the rest of components are very straightforward - just caps and resistors. You can replace all these if you want just going off the labels. It's not a terrible idea to replace all the capacitors. The material they're made from degrades over time, so even if they work, they certainly won't be operating to the specs printed on the label.