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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
cd318
2,636 posts
 
@brownsfan ,

I used to swap spade connectors for soldered ones but on one occasion the heat from the gun melted/burnt out its voice coil wire.

Why oh why can't all companies, at the very least, just use non tarnishing spades and connectors for their drivers?

Seriously, how much are they saving on connectors which will look pitted a few years down the line?

I somehow got what was left resoldered and working but it was an unhappy experience.

As was my decade long foray into the bottomless-moneypit Linn/Naim nexus... 
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
@cd318, indeed!  I will never understand the thinking behind parts selection on speakers.   It seems that I do not understand the underlying economics.  On the other hand, it also seems that a few of the direct to customer guys are beginning to run in a different mode.  If I knew a bit more, I'd be inclined to try building my own.   
justmetoo's avatar
justmetoo
381 posts
 
Going through loads of mid-fi equipment in the vain hope to find, by sheer ’magic’, some satisfying sound quality. Didn’t.

’Außer Spesen, nichts gewesen’...

Maybe the learning exercise was of *some* value.
The sound quality was just NOT getting there until very many years later.

Good sound doesn’t come easy - and not quite at bargain prices either. 😕
Be surprised if YMMV.
M. 🇿🇦
PS: oh dear, and one more nasty learning exercise.
When I connected my ML39 CDP, used as a pre-amp, to the digital satellite TV decoder.
One lightning strike, - the connected coax cable screen/ground must have gone sky-high, some 10k Volt for a split second and fried the Levison no.39.
One stinker of a repair bill. 

Some years later, I had a connection, to my ML36 DAC, from my DVD player, to my TV, to my Decoder -
and from there, wiress to the good Lords lighting.
Boom, - decoder, TV, not the DVD?!?, but the DAC nailed.
So, so sad, eish! 😭
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 

Taking advantage of a trade-in and trade-up deal offered by a shop. I ended up not liking the bigger speakers nearly as much as the smaller ones.

Also, at a different time, not biting the bullet and buying some fairly costly speakers that I really liked but wasn't sure I could afford.  Not doing that led me on a years-long quest for satisfying speakers that eventually ended up costing me a good deal more than those original speakers would have.

jond's avatar
jond
5,845 posts
 
No major losses here but one boneheaded self inflicted mistake I ordered a heavy pair of speaker cables. The manufacturer recommended spades but I insisted on banana plugs. After a few weeks the weight of the cable caused one of the banana plugs to snap off in the binding post of the speaker. I had them reterminated with spades after that.
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