Your worst gaffes
I thought it'd be fun to share our embarrassing experiences, or gaffes we committed with our equipment over the years. I hope that they all ended up ok, but feel free to share those that didn't as well... I'll start.
I had an outpatient foot surgery last year, and they administered a strong painkiller intravenously, and gave me a Vicodin on top of it after I came out of a full-body sedation. When I got home, I felt so good that I had a few shots of vodka, at which point I felt REALLY good. Well, of course I couldn't wait to listen to my records so I proceeded to my listening room and grabbed a record. Not a good idea!
Completely unaware of what I was doing, I lowered the lift lever before I cued up the tonearm so that it dropped onto the record. After a brief confusion, my heart stopped! Luckily, my Lyra Delos appeared to come out unscathed! Did I rest relieved? Of course not. I proceeded to "see" how far the tonearm dropped and whether it could have possibly damaged the cartridge by holding it with my shaky fingers with the lever down. I dropped it twice more...
A few hours later, a few vodkas later, and enough time to contemplate my stupidity, I was listening again, and thought that the anti-skating device on my Classic looked weird as it made the fishing line too taut (as it's supposed to do). As the record was playing, I flicked it for a reason I'll never understand. It sent the tonearm flying across the record with a loud scratch and off the platter. How it did not hit the side of the platter completely destroying the cantilever, I'll never know. I think what saved the cartridge was the fact that flicking the anti-skating mechanism literally sent the tonearm flying rather than drag it across the record, and that it was barely a minute into the first song. The craziest thing was that my Delos again came out unscathed! No bent cantilever, no damage to the stylus. Almost a year later, I still cannot believe it and count myself very, very lucky.
The next day I decided to read the discharge papers. In caps, it stated that the sedation significantly affects judgment, perception, and coordination for hours after the surgery. Oh, really you idiot! Lesson learned...
