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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
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,313 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
5,692 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
12,961 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!
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,510 posts
 
I had a Superphon DM220 amp on the floor. Ataxia was starting to make it difficult to balance bending over so I was pushing on the rocker power switch on/off with my toe. Missed one time and pushed the power LED in.  The amp became a welder and popped both woofers in the sacrifice.
Ended up with better woofers and a 400s amp.
Total ~$600 damage.
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