What has been your costliest mistake in this hobby?

Nothing wrong with a legitimate upgrade if you set $$ aside to spend some "pin money", or for a forced replacement from a broken component that is not worth the cost of repair. A merry go round of change for change sake looking for the holy grail doesn't make sense. If you can actually hear the difference and are willing to pay for it and it doesn't impact your finances, why not? The addictive urge to continuously improve is unfortunately part of many areas of consumerism in our society. As you get older (and hopefully wiser) you don't make purchases impulsively (like I used to do in college, not knowing what the hell I was doing).

But if you are like me and your cartridge stylus completely wears out after 9 years (yesterday) that puts you in a state of panic because you have no legitimate back up, and the time to repair is 4 months or more after shipping overseas with the virus delaying everything, you can make a pragmatic decision.

Luckily, the manufacturer apologized for the extended wait time and accommodated me with a brand new replacement for a few hundred bucks more than a service overhaul. You thank them and will be loyal forever. I could have paid more for an upgrade, (with a similar credit for another $1500) but I was totally happy with the sound out of a cartridge that is still at least on the level of the rest of my system (probably better), and I'm going to be in the same situation sooner this time as am probably listening to my system 3 times as much as normal.

I had a similar situation with a cable that was too short after some box reconfiguration and the manufacturer allowed 100% towards an upgrade of the current price. I couldn't beleive it. It was 25 years old! I will never buy another cable that doesn't say Kimber on it. Plus, now they get free advertising on Audiogon.

@chrisoshea,

'Spending time on audio forums....'


Maybe, maybe not. 

In my experience it's far better than following advice from magazine reviewers and their ilk who nowadays mainly serve as the advertising wing of the manufacturing industry.

Perhaps if forums like this had been around years ago many of the previous posts in this thread could have been avoided. 

For sure there's also fair share of advertising and promotion happening here, unsurprisingly as it's free, but at least there is also a balanced warning of some of the various pitfalls too.

Not to mention plenty of valueable experience thrown in too. Sometimes I wish there was an easy save function for the really helpful posts. 

 well I tried to take my McIntosh integrated amp off the top of an Onkyo receiver now these were approximately 7 feet off the ground on the top shelf of my closet in the process of trying to just get the Onkyo out cuz I was going to give it to my brother  the Macintosh slipped started to fall I tried to catch it with my other arm and didn't do it it landed on the corner smash the glass the front end of the mac and it made me sick I have not tested it yet to see if it's okay I'm either too scared or just don't want to know

Biggest mistake: Bow to peer pressure and then impulsively upgrade, unnecessarily.