What's The Dumbest Thing You've Ever Done?

[RunOutGroove]

Maybe not as big a mistake as some others, but I ruined my Sennheiser HD600 phones trying to replace the contact which holds the cord into one of the sides (poor design, I think). I watched a video on how to take these things apart, but I wasn't careful enough and sheared one of the tiny lead wires in one of the speaker drivers. Turns out that Sennheiser doesn't make replacement parts for those phones anymore and I wasn't able to find them anywhere else online. Too bad because I liked these phones. I prefer the HiFiMan Sundara phones that I replaced them with, but something in the HD series would be a nice contrast to them... Maybe in the future.

 

[titanstats]

It was a Fairchild 412 and it showed up with some shipping damage. Got it put back together and it actually seemed to work fine for a little bit, but then never could figure out how to get rid of this massive hum it had.

Nice table, did you try different cartridges in it? Some improperly/not shielded carts will pick up the motor hum no matter what you do.

 

[ETLS]

The possibility exists that none of us has peaked just yet.

Even at my age I think I'm fully capable of another doozy

 

[twiiii]

Not pursuing my first love! Though the final one was a real winner for 42 years till she passed away.

 

[OvenMaster]

The first was being a chicken$hit and not asking the hottest girl in my senior class to prom. I asked another girl and THEN found out that no one else had had the guts to ask Miss Hottie out. D'oh!
The second was finding both a Pioneer SX-450 receiver and a complete Dynaco ST-70 on the curb. Like a dumbass, I took the Pioneer.

 

[Ariel Views]

When you say the dumbest I have to assume you mean audio related because otherwise there's a lifelong list of equally competing stupidities that I prefer not to delve into. As far as HIFI goes, I think my greatest error was in not realizing that beautiful equipment like Pioneer and Tandberg receivers from the seventies and early eighties wouldn't be made forever. I either gave mine to friends or sold them, and boy what a mistake because shortly after that we entered the era of ugly black metal boxes which predominate to this day.

 

[lokerola]

Many years ago before I was into audio, my parents bought an older mid century house from a guy who was some sort of engineer. My Dad was remodeling the house and it was wired with speakers in the walls and some sort of old amp. He asked me if I wanted any of it. I told him "no".

He threw out the speakers (God only knows what they were), and I later found out he sold the amp to friend who sold it to someone in Japan.

It was a McIntosh MC240.

I try not to think about it......

 

[Jalousie]

Like everyone, hard to number the personal mistakes that I would take back. Audiowise, I had a Fisher 400-cx-2 that I just gave away around 1980. You have to have some regrets.

 

[loopstick]

Crossed railroad tracks when the snow was too deep to see the train. The spotlight basically filled the passenger window of my pickup. It was like a Roadrunner / Coyote cartoon. The train was right there. Then whoosh it was in my rearview mirror. I'd crossed the same tracks a couple of hours before and there was light glowing in the snow but it was from something else down the tracks like maintenance activity so I ignored it on the way back.

 

[Dorkelstein]

I gifted a set of Realistic Mach 3 to my friend Bennie, who sold them, bought them back and then smashed one up in a fit of inebriated anger. Never again.