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
Not the most costly, but one I am still peeved about.

Had my Thorens TD124 on a high shelf, SME tonearm eye level, see that needle drop.

Oh did it drop. Shure V15VxMR, removable stylus with brush, microline on BERYLLIUM.

I dropped that stylus, it landed on my shirt, saved by the beer belly, didn't hit anything hard. Whew!!! 

Damn if the beryllium shaft wasn't shattered, I'm still mad, I won't buy anything more brittle than Boron, and I worry about that. I kept the body but didn't use it for years, found out about Jico here, bought their stylus for it, SAS on boron. 

It's wonderful, I was truly enjoying it, but my first MC AT33PTG/II beats it, I just put them thru another race for several hours today. The tighter channel balance produces an amazingly tight rock steady center, and the greater separation plays off that. I actually had to toe my speakers in more for something that was un-naturally wide (easy for me, heavy monsters on 3 wheels on wood grid floor, like graph paper).


I’ve been streaming over 10 years now and have yet to hear a difference with streamers.  Everything else way more.  Well, all the other usual things anyhow.  It’s the Dac, Mac!
+1 kairosman

Yeah, I don’t drink, smoke, or gamble (well except driving on the roads in West Texas)


Finished building a pair of stand mount speakers that I still have, after sending them in for paint, which was by the guy next door to the speaker factory I worked.. I chipped one of the burgundy candy apple speakers, and had to have it repainted - of course not candy apple again.

Purchased a pair of floor stander speakers that I thought looked great and initially sounded ok, to never use them or sell them, lost in a move.

Forgot to have my D-class amplifier hooked up to speakers and blew a module, fortunately I knew a guy much cleverer than I who fixed it for me.

Purchased three mid-fi pre amps that introduced so much noise into my system that I have them back in boxes and in the garage. I use the volume control on my DAC straight to the power amp now.

There's probably so many little mistakes along the way I'll recall when others post theirs...