Comment by smackeyacky

I dabble a bit in this but only because one of my hobbies is vintage hi fi (1970s level aluminium faced classic Japanese hi fi really)

I think it helps if you have a specific niche you want to play in. I stick with the era before integrated circuits became dominant because troubleshooting those is next level from replacing blown caps or whatever. Motivation is generally that I want to hear the thing I’m fiddling with and that there is usually some mechanical part of that gear that makes them interesting.

Get a desolder gun when you get a soldering iron.

Also the TechMoan guy on YouTube is fun as he shows his failures repairing things along with the successes