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Do You Allow Anyone Else To Operate Your Rig?

No one touches my system...period.

At a dinner party about a year ago, I had a cd playing in the background. When the cd finished, I was busy in the kitchen and entertaining guests. After about 15 minutes of no music, a guest felt that he should start the music up again. I looked up and saw this guy pushing buttons and turning knobs trying to figure out how to get the system going. I must have given him a frosty stare that would have made Medusa proud. My 11 year-old son saw my expression and felt sorry for the guy and went over and told him, "sir, no one is allowed to touch my dad's stuff".

Do other family members play your rig? Do you allow guests to operate your system?

Sorry, but no one is allowed to touch my stuff and I don't apologize for it. I don't even allow anyone to dust it off. Once the housekeeper dusted off my turntable and bent the stylus, ruined it....$500 bucks gone just like that. I never said a word to her about it, I just told her not to ever dust of my equipment again.

In another incident someone tried to play an LP while I was not watching. He got the turntable going but couldn't figure out how to get sound from the system. When I went over to see what was going on, he had the volume turned all the way up to maximum but still had no sound...of course he had no idea what a phono preamp was and of course it was not turned on. Had he turned the source knob one turn to my tuner which was switched on, he probably would have done serious damage to my speakers and scared the heck out of all of my guests with a loud blast. I politely told him not to ever touch my stuff again.

I've never had a guest over that was an audiophile.
128x128mitch4t
jim_swantko
301 posts
 
My wife couldn't power up my system if her life depended on it! She doesn't care about it however so it's not a problem.

Strangers, absolutely not unless they too have nice gear and are trusted.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
3,575 posts
 
My whole system has one volume knob and one switch selecting either TV or DVD sound. Amplifier has max of 100W and speakers can take it. In addition amplifier has soft clipping. The worst thing that can happen is just loud sound that might scare somebody. Keep it simple people!
phd
1,008 posts
 
Its not uncommon for non-audiophiles to try and turn a high end system into a juke box epecially at parties, sometimes the results surprise me. The average person don't understand the time, money & effort that goes into these rigs. Letting these people know in advance that nobody touches it but yourself is a good practice. It is a great fear of mine as well as others that we are one push of the wrong button away from destroying speakers. Even in some rigs where someone in the household tries to turn off a system in the wrong sequence can result in serious problems.
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saygrr
72 posts
 
Absolutely not, the small system perhaps but not the dedicated system. There is just to much money and effort put into it. The turntable would be the biggest concern since very few people even know what it is now days. No one has ever touched the controls on my system and never will.
Good thread.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
4,163 posts
 
Excluding turntable/cartridges, what's with all the comments about serious harm coming to your system from pushing the wrong button? I've seen quite a few systems in my time, but never one with a "danger Will Robinson" setting. Why would anyone design a system that would self-destruct with the push of a wrong button?

Just to make it clear -- I'm talking about turning knobs and pushing buttons, not pulling out cables or opening cases.
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