This week's DUMB A$$ award goes to

BlueFox

ME!!

This morning around 3AM I am kicked back listening to some good tunes when all of a sudden the right speaker goes off, and the amp kicks into protection mode. Having consumed sufficient beers by that time I did some power cycles with no effect, and decided to troubleshoot further after getting some sleep.

My two channel system is on a circa 1980s home entertainment center, and while it works great since I can put heavy duty staples and hooks in the back for cable management, it is a pain in the butt to pull out and push back while not damaging anything.

So, I switch the pre-amp output to verify the problem is with the right amp, and sure enough it still doesn't work. Okay, while having a bad amp is a royal pain, at least I can put the other amp back into stereo and still have almost perfect sound until the other amp is repaired.

I go through the trouble of rewiring and cleaning up the cables to be on one amp, turn it on to check it out, and the right speaker still doesn't work. WTF?!?!?!?

I recheck everything and it looks okay, so I decide the speaker wire must have went bad, so I get ready to replace the wire and verify that theory, and then notice the positive spade lug is not attached to the speaker. Now I am wondering if that just happened while I was moving everything around, so I reattach the spade lug, rewire the system for dual amps, turn it on, and everything is now working as expected. Which is a relief, but

WHAT A DUMB A$$!!!!!! :mad:

grimmace19

Don't feel too bad, I reconnected my entire system last night to accommodate the adcom 5802 I got from chris and thought i had introduced a really nasty ground loop hum. I spent an hour trying to isolate it last night, then lost some sleep over it, then spent another 2 hours this morning trying to figure it out just to find out that my center channel interconnect was only half plugged in which was causing all the buzz.

We are all stupid at different times. Well, most of us, the others are just afraid to admit it.

dragon1952

I removed my power tubes to dust my amp the other day. I had one sitting on a towel but it rolled off and broke when it hit the shelf below. Shuguang Treasure KT88....only a $100 tube :redface:

VR3

My best one is when an amp wouldnt power on because it was not plugged into the wall...

That was awesome.

greyford1979

I recently thought I had a problem with the Blu ray Hdmi connection Of the Pioneer Elite Receiver I bought last winter. One day it was working fine, then I had no sound or video from this connection but the others worked just fine. Couldn't figure it out so just decided to leave it plugged into the DVD Hdmi slot and live with it till I could get it fixed. Well I ended up buying a new TV last month after my old one finally died. As I was setting up the new TV, I realized that I had turned the Blu ray connection off in the receiver:redface: Dohhhhhh!!!!! At least I found the problem before I shipped or took it to a Pioneer service center, for them just to tell me that I'm a jackass because there is nothing wrong with it lol:eek:

BlueFox

OK, I have another. One night after a poker game at the house, a friend stayed to play video games. After watching for a bit I went to bed, told him when he was done to turn everything off, and lock the door when he left.

The next day I go to watch TV and nothing is working. No TV, no stereo, nothing. I get my multi-meter out and there is no AC voltage to the socket. I get my neighbor and we conclude the circuit breaker went bad. After finding one at Home Depot we replace the breaker, but still nothing works.

While sitting on the floor wondering what happened, my neighbor says "What's this?" while pointing to the wall switch. He flips the switch, and like magic, everything works! I had never even noticed the switch before, and had never used it.

[Deleted User]

I received my new "Ice" receiver several days ago. Last night the RF remote responded but my "Ice" receiver would not respond. This was after a dozen or so drinks.... I remember choking the life out of my remote and tried to develop a contingency plan. But also realized, I am over a dozen drinks in and should stop choking, seriously about to throw the remote, out the door... and go to sleep.

Next day, today actually, woke up sober and tried again. Same results. Fiddled for an hour or so. Realized... Batteries were low... changed out batteries, worked like a charm. Realized something else.. I threw away the RF Module. Eff me... One dumb **** award after another. What next? Am I going to piss on my new receiver?

Halen

decal

Two words...............mute button
:redface:

thsmith

I thought for sure the OP story was going to go in a different direction because of the time of night, beers being involved and moving connecting gear.

I have not done much dumb stuff in audio, yet but when I was building a bike and had the starter powered but not wired to the handle bar I was checking the clearences on the starter gear and accidently engaged it and ran my finger through the starter. THat required a trip to ER.

SDA1C

decal wrote: »

Two words...............mute button
:redface:

Been there done that! Ain't enough embarrassed emoticons so I'll leave it at that LOL.

tonyb

VR3 wrote: »

My best one is when an amp wouldnt power on because it was not plugged into the wall...

That was awesome.

LOL....yeah man, I've done that on more than one occasion.

bmbguy

That's the problem with all these new-fangled devices. You gotta be keepin' an eye on 'em all the time...

I was messing with some wires or something a few weeks ago, with the cat's help of course. I got everything all prettied up, turned it on -- nothing worked. WTH? The cat had wandered around and stepped on the power switch on the outlet strip.

So, whenever I can, I blame the cat...

littlewoodboats

BlueFox wrote: »

While sitting on the floor wondering what happened, my neighbor says "What's this?" while pointing to the wall switch. He flips the switch, and like magic, everything works! I had never even noticed the switch before, and had never used it.

I once took down and replaced a broken ceiling fan because the lady helping out around the house flipped a switch I did not know about. I have earned my fair share of Dumb **** awards

Rivrrat

I'm supposed to be some kind of dc telcom powering expert at work (a title a try to run away from, but I get the calls anyway) so when I do dumb **** stuff, my wife finds it highly amusing.

I'll give you all two that have happened in the last couple of weeks.

Last saturday, I noticed the landscape lighting wasn't working in the back yard, so Sunday I went out to fix it. I had been weeding in the back and had hit a cable with a hoe, so I unburied the cables where I had been weeding and check them all for damage. I went to the transformer and covered the photoelectric eye with tape so I could get power to the system and that's when I noticed the transformer was half plugged into the outlet.....Fixed now. :redface:

Two Sundays ago we had a several hrs long power outage. No biggie, it happens. A couple of days later I get the message from my 18 yr old daughter that our Pioneer Elite avr isn't working anymore (all she does is turn it on and adjust the volume when she watches netflix streaming). That's worse than hearing "Dad, something is wrong with my computer".:evil:

So I go play with it, and sure enough it won't power up. So I pull the cabinet out and check for power at the outlet, then I look at where it's plugged into the Belkin pf 30 power center, and it looks fine there. So I push everything back in, scratch my head and then notice on the power center the switched power light isn't on. It had shut off during the power outage, I power it back on....Fixed now.:redface:

headrott

I've got this one to give (back) to you guys. It's not electrically dumb, but classic none-the-less.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?103729-I-had-a-MW6501-driver-drop-on-my-head.&highlight=MW6501+head

Enjoy!

Greg

BeefJerky

headrott wrote: »

I've got this one to give (back) to you guys. It's not electrically dumb, but classic none-the-less.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?103729-I-had-a-MW6501-driver-drop-on-my-head.&highlight=MW6501+head

Enjoy!

Greg

Ouch! Not exactly what happened to me, but I had a similar incident. I was working on reorganizing some wires behind one of my speakers; note that I had a (running) 3.5" external drive sitting on top of said speaker. Well, as I was fooling around with the wires, I pulled on the wrong one and the drive crashed right onto the back of my head. First thing I did was curse up a storm due to the pain (yes, very mature handling of the situation, I know); thankfully no one was around to hear it except for my cat, and I don't think he cared. After calming down and checking for blood (thankfully there wasn't any), I plugged the drive back in to check it, already knowing to consequence. Well, it spun up, but you could hear the head dragging on the platters; head crash for the win! I cursed a bit more, but I knew I had backups of my data, so I got over it.

ViperZ

Rivrrat wrote: »

So I go play with it, and sure enough it won't power up. So I pull the cabinet out and check for power at the outlet, then I look at where it's plugged into the Belkin pf 30 power center, and it looks fine there. So I push everything back in, scratch my head and then notice on the power center the switched power light isn't on. It had shut off during the power outage, I power it back on....Fixed now.:redface:

I had the same thing happen to me with PF60 a couple of years ago. We get home from work, no internet in the house. Go down to the basement, the router is not working, but the modem is working (modem is plugged straight into the wall outlet, router is sitting on PF60 with the rest of HT). Went upstairs, got my spare router, plugged it into the wall, and after half an hour of changing settings, got internet. Well, guess what happened when I tried to turn on home theater a couple of hours later!!!
Damn PF60 shut off during the storm / power outage earlier in the day.

kharp1

As a industrial electrician I've learned to check the little crap first...it can save a whole lot of work. Only learned through trial and error just like the above type of troubleshooting.

littlewoodboats

I get to be a double nominee. :redface:

I just discovered that I did not know which model speaker I had purchased. (in my defense I bought them from the original owner and he should have known)

SDA1C

Refer to http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?130809-Mass-interference-with-the-PC&p=1744793&posted=1#post1744793:cry:

bmbguy

SDA1C wrote: »

Refer to http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?130809-Mass-interference-with-the-PC&p=1744793&posted=1#post1744793:cry:

I had to chuckle when I saw this post, cuz I'd just gotten done reading the end of the 'noise' thread. Well, at least you got your problem figured out!

SDA1C

Ironic that the closest call in a long time is also the thing that has put the biggest smile on my face. I just feel lucky that nothing went drastically wrong.

Drenis

Kudos to nominating yourself.

My GF gets one of these awards this week too. I came home from school last night only to hear that she could not get my Playbook to connect to the Squeezebox and therefore, she couldn't play any music. Well she neglected to turn on the wireless antenna for the Playbook. No wonder why the app couldn't talk to the Squeezebox.

LOL... made for a good laugh.