Solder Pot Advice

Get a high end model Plato. They come up on ebay frequently. Mine had been used in a lab setting and was definitely used. After I took it apart and cleaned the internal connections and wiring it worked perfect.
This question would be better asked over on Audiocircle. The advice I got over there with basically the same question was invaluable. Although it nearly dissuaded me from going the project. Real pain in the...

Solder pots are messy, fumey things -- they take a while to get up to full temperature, and take a big chunk of solder to get them going. Unless you have to tin a hundred wires or something, I wouldn't bother For small-quantity work, a broad tip on a good temperature-controlled iron is at least as good, and it's easier to keep from melting dielectrics (and burning your fingers!)

If you do go the solder pot route, make sure that your work area is very adequately ventillated.

Solder pots work well to tin the ends of Cardas and other enameled wires, but as implied above, for small projects, other methods may be just as good, such as a wire brush or sanding wheel on the end of a dremel.

I've actually had excellent results with litz wire (including Cardas) simply by cranking my soldering station to a little over 800F, and giving them a good tinning. I then turn it back down to the usual 700F for actual soldering.

But if you need more heat capacity for i.e. bigger litz speaker wires, you can use a big stained-glass style soldering iron for the tinning - they're cheap and should idle at about 800-850F. These things also work well for soldering to the chassis (i.e. Fender guitar amp ground connections) - it's actually the tool that was used in production for this purpose.