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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
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
5,320 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
5,946 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.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,272 posts
 
Going through loads of mid-fi equipment in the vain hope to find, by sheer ’magic’, some satisfying sound quality. Didn’t.
If you are right, then why it was working for me?

The answer: dont upgrade it embed it first..... :)
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Actually now that I think about it the most costly mistake I made was CD. It came out right after college when I was broke and moving around and storing my Technics and records. Bought into Perfect Sound Forever. Only years later when I dug it out of storage and hooked it up did I realize my mistake. Still had kept some records, but gave most away. Listening to stupid CD BS cost me thousands.  

Made up for it since though, let me tell you!
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