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.
mitch4t
Neva! I explained to my super cost-conscious wife that just turning the components on/off in the wrong order can cause damage. She has yet to ask what the proper order is and apparently just prefers to use the portable boom box if I'm not around to supervise, lest she blow something up forcing me to purchase yet another audio gem. Fine with me.
If a stranger so to speak wants to see the light of day tomorrow they or who ever will not get within 5 feet of my set up. This is told to them up front. DO NOT TOUCH !
I do have my audio friends over and they can pretty much do what ever they want.
Having a dedicated room is a real plus. Other then I have to do all the cleaning, but that's my choice and I will keep it that way.
Did you ever think of educating people on how to operate the system properly? You have a very nice setup, but I would think the average human could understand how to run it with less than 10 minutes of instruction. It ain't rocket science.
If someone comes over & wants to have a listen, I have them sit in the sweet spot & hand over the remote. A 12 second tutorial on operation & they're having fun.

My wife isn't interested in the stereo but my boy likes to run his computer or game gear through, so I leave input #1 open for him. He's learned over the yrs. about audio & has a decent computer based system.

As for the nuts & bolts of operation, only a few trusted audiophile friends and my boy can do whatever.
Audiophiles are a dying breed. The population will be gone quicker with that kind of attitude. Education is key.