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What is your scariest moment in High End audio?

After upgrading my digital front end, with another glass of wine in hand, I thought perhaps the analog setup deserved an upgrade from the entry level Kpetsu.

I then discovered that Koetsu was over! A search found a source for a Rosewood Signature Platinum, which I duly purchased and installed, together with a 3 gm weight in the JMW Memorial arm. That went OK, and I set it up using the VPI Scoutmaster jig, set the tracking weight to 1.9 gms, aligned the azimuth and made sure that the Sutherland Duo was set to 100 ohms and 64dB gain.

I settled down to a glorious hour or two of listening.  Then I thought "Did I get the downforce right.  Checked it & spot on.

i put another record on, lowered the arm to the record.  SILENCE (I could actually here the stylus in the groove but that was it.)

OMG.  Yes the cables were in.  Yes the pre was set to input from the deck. Had I destroyed a $6,700 inadvertently?

After 5 minutes of panic I turned off everything and restarted. All OK.  Who knew that a pre-amp could need rebooting?

 

 

retiredaudioguy
mswale
236 posts
 

Vintage setup, so anything can happen. Added a sub a few months ago. 

Sounded great after getting it all sorted. Thought I'd swap out the speaker cables from the amp to the sub. 4ft of 10g wired in, over the zip cord that was thrown in for setup. 

It sounded ok, but was surprised the zip cord was just as good, if not better....

Then started to loose bass, played around with the sub, checked connections were tight, sub was on. Also felt like my speaker balance was off, it just sounded off. Loos of dynamics, center image was off, the system was just "scattered". This plagued me for several weeks. Great, my just restored amp is going out..

Scoured the web for a replacement, found a nice pre & power amp 4h away. Called the guy, we chatted agreed to meet half way. Piled the dog in the car for a road trip. Units as described, power amp looks better than mine. We drive off

Get home, test the new stuff out, it sounds much better, but not as good as after my refreshing my pre & power amp. Hook my pre-amp into the new power amp. Oh yeah, that sounds good! It must be my power amp going out. Put my old power amp back, switch on. OMG, it sounds AMAZING, what?

Months ago, when I swap out the zip cord, swapped the left ch, so it has been out of phase. Cost me a thousand bucks, and lots of sleepless nights of worrying. Felt like a dumb a$$. Now I got spares....

awboat
47 posts
 

I had installed my speakers hanging from the ceiling of my attic bedroom. They were big big speakers, Rectilinear 7a's. I had to walk to my bed in the dark since there was no 3-way switch for the lights.

As I groped my way to the bed, I hit one of the speakers and it fell. Missing my foot by less than an inch. It broke a floorboard and chipped the corner of the speaker.

I can only imagine the damage it would have done to my foot. 

quincy
383 posts
 

Oh God!  When I used a ferros machinest square to set up my Benz Micro Glider, and the powerful magnet pulled the arm sideways and clipped off the Boron cantaliver.  By by Benz !  $2k gone in a heartbeat!

jsd52756's avatar
jsd52756
465 posts
 

bjesien posted;

"When she reached her hand down my front pocket and the receipt was in there."

yes

Wife, "I thought you said four or five hundred!!"

Biesien, "No, I said fourty five hundred..."

 

boostedis
117 posts
 

Sitting next to an old guy listening to a pair B&W Nautilus. He had the remote sandwiched between the tablet as he was searching for music, he was slowly and inadvertently turning the volume up as a song was ending! When the next song came on, I couldn’t move fast enough to keep it from starting at full volume!! The Amps were a quartet of Levinson’s so plenty of powa!! My heart jumped out of my chest!!! lol 

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