Silliest/Dumbest thing you did lately on an amp.

[mort]

While rebuilding an old Twin, I needed to replace the grillcloth frame as the original was trashed. I spent lots of time cutting out my piece of wood, making sure to size it just exactly so it would be snug, but not too big once the cloth was stapled on. Stretched and stapled the grillcloth, being ever so careful to keep it straight and true. It looked fabulous ... until I stuck it on the amp and realized that I had forgotten to paint it black before putting the cloth on *facepalm*

[jbltwin1]

Had a Music Man amp running on the bench that I had JUST converted back to tube driver from solid state. The sad part about this tale is that the amp was MINE. Anyway, had it up and running, was functioning normally. Put it away for the night because I heard a hum that sounded like I had a ground missing somewhere and I was tired. Up the next morning at 6 because I wanted to get back to it. Fire it up BEFORE I've had my coffee. Standing over it with a pair of small dykes in my hand AND I DROP THEM. 700 volts doesn't bounce very far before it burns some stuff up. Never DID go back and fix that one. Still have it. Maybe someday.................. Mike.

[timrichter9]

Thanks for all the funny responses guys. Wife is battling cancer and not a lot to laugh about lately. Thought of one more on myself. Bought a Peavey 412 for a song since someone had sprayed a band logo. Got new cloth and it was tight but i thought it could be tighter with a little heat gun heat. I now have a quarter sized melt hole in an otherwise nice cab refinish. Lesson. Keep the gun moving!

[Enzo]

Glue a logo or something over the hole.


Sorry to hear of your wife's battle. Try to keep laughing. I had a friend many years ago, a college psychology professor, not that it matters. He came down with lymphatic cancer. (Whatever the real name of it is.) He told me that, and I said "Oh, so you're a lymph wad." He thought that was funny. He said to me, "You know Enzo, we have a support group, and I ought to take you with me to it. We have one rule: you can ALWAYS interrupt for a joke. You'd be great." I was flattered and told him I'd be happy to go. Alas, two weeks later, he was gone, and I never got the chance. But I never forgot that rule, I thought any group with a rule like that has got to be good for folks. SO find humor where you can. Can't hurt.

[Chuck H]

On the heat gun/grill cloth issue... (I didn't know that MOST of the grill cloth is actually plastic when I ordered!!!) I was trying to use a blow drier to tighten the grill cloth on a build. But I don't have a dedicated blow drier for this purpose. So I was using my daughters blow drier (I don't have enough hair to need one anymore ). Well... Hers is a dirty mess. While working, a tiny ember flew out of the blow drier and landed on the grill cloth. Burning a 1/2" hole in it before I could damp it! I didn't have any more grill cloth and the amp had to be ready in a couple of days for Winter NAMM 2009!!! I had to cut the grill cloth from a larger baffle board on a different amp (one of my personal amps) to finish the project and be ready in time. The new grill cloth on my own amp looks like $h!t ... Ha!

[olddawg]

I did something REALLY stupid just yesterday... I disagreed with my wife.

+1 to that!

[Chuck H]

I like a hard headed woman! But only if she thinks like me!?! My wife doesn't.

[Tom Phillips]

Was testing an old Vox AC-30 after a cap job and new set of power tubes were installed. The darn thing would only put out 15 watts. Checked EVERYTHING, tried new tubes, all voltages OK and still only 15 watts output into the dummy load. Output waveform looked good. Checked dummy load resistance, tried a different voltmeter, all internal voltages OK but she would not put out more than 15 Watts. Sounded good playing guitar through the speakers but ya know that 15 W vs. 30 W doesn’t sound much different given that everything else is working correctly. Still, I knew that something wasn’t right. After wasting the better part of an hour I noticed that my sig gen wasn’t set to the usual 1 kHz. It was set to 100 kHz! Who would have thought that an AC-30 could put out 15 Watts at 100 kHz.

[Ted]

A few years back I was running some EMC tests on an instrument. It involved a 6 kV 50uS transient generator. The test was applied in both common and differential mode. To do one of the tests the mains earth had to be lifted. I forgot to replace it. We had visitors in the lab and I was doing the "cool engineer with scary looking test equipment" thing. I had my hand on the case as I asked the tech to hit the go switch. About a millisecond later I was looking significantly less cool. The transient protection probably reduced the 6kV by about 250V. The screwdriver in my other hand bounced off the techs safety glasses.

[timrichter9]

I was having problems with a Roland Juno keyboard (no left channel). After opening it up (and having suggestions put to me by Enzo), I isolated the problem to a bad 10kx2 volume fader potentiometer. After getting that sorted, I buttoned it back up. Preparing to sell it, I thought "better make sure the headphone jack works." Only got right side output. Fiddled around inside until I checked the packaging for the 1/4" T-R-S to 1/8" headphone adapter. MONO to STEREO!!! Duh....

[Greenmachine]

This was for an effects pedal but ...

I etched a board using press 'n peel blue, populated the board, wired it up and tested it -- nothing. I had forgotten to make the press-n-peel a mirror image transfer. The circuit board was completely backwards.

[Chuck H]

Here's a simple one. But I have a feeling it'll be familiar. I just finished a build. Plugged it into the limiter and flipped the switch... Nothing.?. Looked over the wiring. At least far enough to be certain that the PT was hooked up to the AC correctly and the pilot light was connected... Hmmm?

I forgot to put a fuse in the fuse holder! I can design and build an amp but I can't seem to remember that the fuse holders don't come with my specified fuse in them

[Ted]

OK. If this isn't a winner for the stupidest thing by anybody ever.

Mid 60s Hagstrom GA-85 combo. Germanium transistors. "The tremolo doesn't work - I had the socket rewired a while back"

The amp sounded fine. Only as the owner said, the trem didn't work.

I took a footswitch and plugged it in to the (unmarked) jack on the back of the amp.
Hit the switch and the amp stopped working.

...It was an extension speaker socket.
Fortunately I had a box of ASZ15s.

There are so many lessons to be learned from this. All of them, I should have learned years ago.

BTW If anyone wants to know where the trem/reverb switch sockets are on a GA85, you have to take the back panel off to get at them.

[amgard]

I had an Ashdown ABM 500 EVO II brought into the workshop where a couple of the output transistors had their legs completely vapourised! So it had had quite an overload at some point. Replaced the trannies, checked everything I could - and powered up..

It seemed OK, nothing smoked, but it was very quiet indeed. Carefully turned up the sig gen, gain, master vol - still very quiet!

And then I noticed the front-panel mute button was pushed in!.
Glad the customer wasn't there to see my face.

[DrGonz78]

This one will make you laugh...!! A friend wanted me to work on a Morley PWO wah wah pedal. I know that I should have read up on this one before working on it, but that was my first mistake. So, I check it out... Yup, no wah wah coming from this baby! Open her up to have a look. I see right away this cardboard type thing covering over something so I take it out. Also, notice that there is one Christmas light in there to show the light that the unit is on... Then I see this photocell and I reposition it in a way that seemed natural to the movement of the foot pedal movement. So I put the sucker back together plug it in and it is working just fine now, aside from nasty input jack problem. This whole time I don't even know that this is a photocell in this unit and did not make the LDR connection. So, I dim-wittingly remove the X-mas bulb and install a not so fricking bright red LED light. I was thinking that we just want to see the light come on as an indicator that the wah wah was on. So, I get it all back together and go to try it out, and nothing. No wah sound...

At this point I thought I must have done something wrong somewhere, but had no clue what. I have the bottom cover off of the wah unit but it is on a wooden board letting no light into the unit. Now at this point I have no idea that it needs light to engage the wah frequency... I was about to finish for the night and was scratching my head... Then for some reason I turned the unit over on it's side (light from the room now seeping into the unit) and notice the effect is now working. Then back right side up and it won't work... Scratching head. So, I am thinking well it works great when it is placed upside down, but rather hard to play on stage that way. Went for a smoke break and then it hit me!! LIGHT!!

So, I confirmed this on the good ole MEF site here and I should have read all that before starting to work on this pedal. Still it was idiotic of me to blindly figure out the problem of a non-working Morley PWO wah pedal without understanding how it worked. However, it was fun to see the light and realize it on my own. I will never make that same mistake again... But I will make some other mistake and laugh at myself again.