Back in '73 when Quad (remember 4 channel?) was in vogue, I built a chip-based CD4 decoder to experiment with. But I only had 2 channel, so the plan was to demo it on an engineer friends' 4 speaker rig. Plugged everything in & powered on to the sound of an audible "pop" & 120 Hz buzzing (amps in hard DC clipping). Shut it all down right away, but the damage was already done. Two woofers' cones were frozen forward, & the smell of burning coil varnish then became evident. I had neglected to install coupling-caps on the decoders' output lines, placing +24 Vcc supply right into direct-coupled amps' inputs! The amps only needed new fuses, but I ended up buying him a pair of new woofers. Not to mention the embarrassment right in front of several other engineers... It wasn't terribly expensive, but I'll never live that one down.
Best Audio Related Story (or joke).
With all the stress and pressure going around at Audiogon these days, (posting issues, complaints and legal issues), seems like this would be a good opportunity to inject some light hearted audio related comments, stories or just plain old jokes. Please share yours!