I R a Doofus

[thebes]

I have a wonderful Craig rebuilt Scott 299 (a) that's been sounding really out of sorts lately. Can't properly describe it but clear on the inside and scratchy and disjointed on the outside (my apologies to audiophiles everywhere for the terminology).

Fiddle with this and that, swap tubes, check wires, use a test cd etc.

Give it up, pull the plug for the terminal strip, and leave for vacation. Come back and decide that maybe it's the cd player so I plug in the terminal strip, and go to plug in the the cd player.

The strip is sorta tucked away in back of something and I can't quite see to get the cd plug in. So I pull it out into the light and somehow I've got the Scott plug straddling two different whateveryacallems on the strip.

Put the plug in the right way and all that very creative invective and muttering about that ham-fisted, incompentent incoherent, so-and-so Craig goes right away. (till next time)

Had to fess up but how abbut the rest of you. So let's start a "Stupid Moments In AudioLand" thread (mostly to divert attention from me).

So what's your audio faus pax?

[codhead]

Mine was the auto-muting circuit in my Cal Alpha DAC. Why bother with that pesky owner's manual - one cable in, and two cables out. Power on, hmmm - no sound. Crank the volume halfway up, hmmm - still no sound. Maybe if I put my ear right up to the speaker, I'll hear something... and I certainly did!

[Duke Spinner]

howsabout ......

first band onstage at the NY State fair

well the stage was damp, i went to jump on my Wah pedal ...

damn thing went right out from under me...i was gyratng around tryin' to keep my balance, keep from smashin' that, then near new '71 Les Paul ..

we got Extra points ...

.............................for Showmanship .........

is that close enuff to dumb (luck), Mr. Thebes ...??

[Champagne taste beer budget]

Good topic, Mr Thebes. First that comes to mind is the squeaky/scratchy tweeter in one of my KG4's that would only settle down if I cut the treble way back, and then it sounded, well, like you'd expect it to sound with the treble cut way back. Found this site, ordered a new tweeter, installed it myself without a catch, and started listening.

Right about then is when I decided that in audio, as in automobile repair, the shoot from the hip approach isn't always the best. Since the squeak/scratch was still there, I started doing a little diagnostics and found that my 20 year old, $100 EQ was causing my problem the whole time. Took it out of the loop, saved the old tweeter as a backup, and have managed to make over 1,300 posts and who knows how many new friends that share my affinity for good sound since then.

I don't recall exactly, but I believe my tweeter was like $30 delivered. I've learned so much here since I first visited, I don't know that I could put a price on the education I've received, the friends I've met or the fun I've had. Thanks to all of you.

[colterphoto1]

I have a Yamaha RXV850 receiver. After purchasing a newer model, decided to refurbish this one for the basement system. Balance knob was crunchy sounding and I suspected one channel was going out. So I take it and a box of eq's and other stuff in to my local pro/PA shop. The guys are really good at what they do.

Get it home plug everything in, NO SOUND. In any mode. I check all speaker wires, remote, source, replug in everything, check fuses. Finally exasperated, call the shop. They say bring it back in.

I get a call next day. Seems I forgot that I used to use an eq in the Pre-out Pre-in loop. The jumper bars had been removed and without a component linking the pre and amp sections, obviously NO SOUND.

DUUUUHHH, Y'know if you throw a bullet in a furnace, it'll explode?

Michael

[3dzapper]

It's not audio but CP1 reminded me of a good one.

During cold damp nights I used to leave my boat's electric stove on low to keep mildew from forming in the small cabin. Since the stove only worked from shore power, I never thought about it once we left the dock.

One day on the way out to the tuna grounds, I took my M1911 Officers Model .45 out of my belt and put it on the shelf on top of the refrierator in the cabin. I took the spare clip out of my pocket and laid it on the stove.

When we got back to the dock, I went up to clean the fish while my fishing partners cleaned up the boat. About a half hour later we are talking at the top of the dock when POW! POW! GUN SHOTS!!!! All three of us duck for cover close to the ground. I feel for my side arm and it isn't there! POW!POW!POW! The shots are coming from MY BOAT!!!!

My mate had plugged in the shore power with the stove on and the magazine atop.

Luckily, there was no damage except to the magazine and my pride.

There is another, but I am sworn to secrecy!

Rick

[neo33]

"DUUUUHHH, Y'know if you throw a bullet in a furnace, it'll explode?"

NO! If you throw a cartridge in a furnace, it'll explode. A bullet is only a metal projectile.

[Bonzo]

Ah, which one? Oh, I know, got my JBL D130's back from being re-coned. Put them back in my Fender Showman cabinet and screwed the back on the cabinet, with a regular screw driver, about 1000 screws!!! Plugged in the old SUNN amp and played an E chord on the Telecaster. Funny, but there was no sound? Checked the volume, tubes glowing, connections good but still no sound. Fearing the worst, I hooked the SUNN up to another cabinet. Hey, the stinging bite of a Tele with 140 watts behind it! So, I took out the 1000 screws and to my surprise, I forgot to hook up the wires to the the driver terminals, DUH!!! I now have a chordless power screwdriver and screwdriver bits for my drill! Never drink beer while working on your stuff!!! I do have more but that will suffice for now.

[Timmikid]

Years ago, when visiting the states, I bought a real nice 8-track/radio. The radio had real nice sound and I used the thing while travelling the West Coast. When I got home, of-course I used a voltage regulator to bring the 220 volts down to 110. Half a year ago I moved, put the radio near my bed side in my new house and you guessed it, ZZZing!

Since then I check about 20 times before I turn on my mc-30's. They have a name for this disease I think.

[ben.]

You guys are idiots. I've never done anything like that!!

[Anakin26]

It´s not exactly audio but it´s an ht disaster. So I will tell the story.

I was building the black paneling in my ht with a friend of mine. It´s a wooden construction covered with black stage-cloth. We used staples to fix the cloth on the wooden framework.

We had been working all day and finally had to mount the cloth on one of the biggest and most difficult pieces. We took every precaution and worked really slowly so that the cloth would have nice tension in the end, eventhough the frame had a lot of tricky angles and edges.

When we where finished we picked it up from the floor and marveled at our work of genius.

Well.... at least until we tried to put it in place on the wall and finally discovered, that we had mounted the cloth mirror-inverted.

Dooooooohhhhhh!

We spent another 45 minutes on the floor pulling out around 250 staples with a scredriver and pliers. Then we did the whole thing again.

The good news... in the end everything looked perfect!

Nick

[Ray Garrison]

I used to be a big believer in the "too much power is not enough power" school of thought - you know, overdriving a low powered amp into your speakers will hurt them because it'll clip, while using a way overpowered amp won't really do anything bad because you're only using a few watts, max, most of the time.

That only goes so far...

I had a really nice sounding system at the time, a pair of B&W 801f original series mated with a Dalquist SW-1 subwoofer. Only problem was they (both speakers and sub) were just ridiculously sensitivity challenged... I had to use a pair of bridged GFA-555's on the 801's to get anything close to enough volume, and even then the dynamics at somewhat loud volume levels were quite constrained. Sub sounded good at lower volumes, but sort of fell behind when levels increased.

Was playing some Dead one day while helping my bud clean his boat, out in the driveway. Had doors and windows of sound room open so we could hear the music. Decided I needed to boost the bass level relative to the mains. Re-arranged things so one GFA-555 was driving mains, other was dedicated to sub (replacing B&K ST-70 that had been there.) This resulted in my using an Adcom GFA-555 bridged into mono, producing about 600 watts into an 8 ohm load, to drive a sub rated at a maximum peak input level of 75 watts. Sounded really good...

After about a half hour, suddenly noticed there was *NO BASS*. Figured I'd blown a fuse or something... went back inside, noticed aroma of hot plastic. Checked out subwoofer. No output. Hummm... turn everything off, try the old "tap on the speaker cone and see what it sounds like" test, which I guess is kind of like kicking the tires on a car... anyway, tap on subwoofer cone. Instead of THUMP, hear tap. Tap harder. tap. Try to move cone. Won't move. Push harder. Awful grinding noise ensues. Oh-oh... take cone out of speaker. Voice coil is *COMPLETELY MELTED* with black, sticky plastic oosing (?spell?) out of magnet gap. This is not a good thing... call dealer. They say call Dalquist. Call Dalquist. Driver is made in Germany, will cost, like, $500 to get a replacement. Bummer...

Nothing succeeds like excess only goes so far...

[garymd]

Refer to this thread:

http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=68626&forumID=68&catID=19&search=1&searchstring=&sessionID={C28C9EA8-2AA3-4BA7-95F1-BD42065A6364}

[customsteve01]

Ref this thread

Things I shouldn't have done

Steve

[thebes]

Sorry to be just getting back to this, my DSL is very cranky at night but hopefully will be fixed soon.

Cool stuff, now we know why Rick is only allowed to play with bows and arrows.

Good heads up Steve. I had forgotten that thread. I didn't participate since this is only the first time ever I made an audiophile boo-boo. Well there was the time I decided to move an amp to a better spot while everything was hooked up and plugged in, and of course the world famous runin with turntable needle in the eye, and then...oh forget about it.

Fun stuff!

[NOSValves]

No the funniest blunder has to be the customers that buy the Scott amps where the volume control is setup with pull on/push off. It says "pull on" but the writing is placed on the bottom side of the control so if they set the amplifier up so they are looking at it from above you can not see it. I have many a frustrated customers contact me wanting to know how to turn the darn thing on LOL !! I always have to fess up that the first Scott amp I owned I had the very same problem and we both laugh.

The second funniest blunder that only happened once thankfully was the customer that didn't remove the bubble wrap from around the tubes inside the amp and ran the amp for months with the bubble wrap melting and stinking up his room. Mind you the bubble wrap was easily seen inside the cage. It melted so bad it fused the tubes into there sockets.

Craig

[Speedball]

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On 8/20/2005 10:34:30 AM NOSValves wrote:

The second funniest blunder that only happened once thankfully was the customer that didn't remove the bubble wrap from around the tubes inside the amp and ran the amp for months with the bubble wrap melting and stinking up his room. Craig

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Man, that must melting plastic must have smelled horrible.....lol.

I took my receiver to a local repair shop because it would just not put out any sound. The shop later called to say it would be abour $250.00 for replacement parts.

I said no and took it to another shop and the guy said you just have to push the tiny Tape mode button on the face of the receiver.

[fini]

DIY tube dampers!