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What has been your costliest mistake in this hobby?

For example :I recently learned a hard lesson- I accidentally ran voltage thru my $3000 MC cartridge (kiseki purple heart).  I have a TT with 5 prong connector and a phono cable with a 5 prong connector.  I accidentally swapped where they plugged into and ran electric thru the tonearm into the cartridge.  It was a stupid - not thinking- hasty mistake. When I corrected the problem the cartridge was fried.  An avalanche of four letter words followed!

So what has been your biggest and/or costliest mistake?
polkalover
audiovideonirvana's avatar
audiovideonirvana
56 posts
 
Marantz DV9500 (B-stock): bad drawer mechanism, went tits-up after a couple of months, it was deemed unfixable; Marantz SA8260: ditto, plus background hiss and noise; Audio Research CA50: bad power supply caused massive pops at random during music, not disclosed by Agon seller who shall remain nameless. All three were not cheap and ended up being turkeys. I suffered a loss on all three.
rosey
9 posts
 
selling my trl gt 400s, gtp preamp, and soundlab a1s. still chasing that lost Magic! rip P.W.
rosey
9 posts
 
I think even the dog misses the emotion
mitch4t's avatar
mitch4t
1,610 posts
 
My costliest mistake was to buy nearly one thousand vinyl LP's over the decades that had only one song on the album that I liked.

The 'one' song per album I liked cumulatively proved very expensive.
stretch76's avatar
stretch76
22 posts
 
Buying brand new what I thought was “ state of the art” only to find out 1-2 years later that was “out of date” and new changes had happened HDMI for instance and now my 6k gear was worth only $1k and couldn’t be upgraded. OUCH
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