I always do something stupid...


...I have a pretty nice system and it is important to me. I spend hours researching tweaking and getting it right. I spend even more time listening to it of course. I am a pretty careful and meticulous person in most things.

So...why is it that everytime I get a new piece of expensive equipment or a new cable or whatever, I always manage to do something you are not supposed to do. Like turning off the pre-amp before the power amps and getting a loud pop. Or leaving an amplifier on and unplugging the interconnect attached to it at the pre-amp. Or forgetting that the interconnects to the subwoofer are JUST long enough and trying to move the subwoofer (and thus stressing the interconnects) without unplugging them. Or SIMPLY NOT NOTICING THAT THE $!@*# VOLUME IS UP TOO HIGH BEFORE I PUSH PLAY ON THE TRANSPORT. I could go on.

Point being, I've never really screwed anything up, but it's not from lack of "rying." Is this just me? I realize I've opened myself up to cruelty on this one...
dgaylin
My funniest moment (not at the time) was when I hooked up a new pair of interconnects from my preamp to my tuner. I couldn't wait to hear the difference from the old interconnects. I, patiently, warmed up my tubed gear for about 10 minutes and left standby mode, but when I turned up the volume, there was no sound at all! I was beside myself, when I discovered that I had mistakenly hooked up the interconnect on the aux line outlet instead of the tuner line outlet of the preamp. Since the source selector on the preamp was set to tuner, I got no sound. I guess I could have switched the preamp source from tuner to aux and listen to the tuner, but instead, I turned everything off and installed the interconnect to the tuner outlets of the preamp. It was a very frustrating 30 minutes before I got everything right. I am glad I was alone when this happened. I have had other senior moments and am a master at misplacing my house keys. At least, I found the new interconnects pleasing!
Dodgealum, I know that's not you trying to insinuate that you've never done anything stupid!
Not you who trashed the ARC 150.2 and said it didn't sound good because you fail to switch the toggle switches on the back from balanced to unbalanced? That's not you is it?
Happens to the best and worst of us - probably because none of us are dispassionate about our hobby and we get excited to try the new tweak, cable, position, next album, etc. and forget the logical sequences. I have made most of the same errors you describe at some point.

My worst offense so far is that I was hooking up my bare speaker cable ends in the back of amp by feel and managed to arc across positive and negative terminals (I apparently don't feel that good). When I turned my amp back on the sound came out muted, I turned the volume up (DOOH!) and all sound stopped. I opened up the amp and two of tree fuses were toast. Thank God and engineers for fuses. The silver lining is that I replaced the stock fuses with HiFi Tuning silver jobs for an overall improvement in sound. I fitted my cables with banana plugs to eliminate the chance of doing that particular stupid thing again.