amp building/ repair stories

[mike7]

So I'm sitting here staking turrets on my coffee table....my phone rang and I drop it as I try to answer. It falls perfectly on the baby food jar I have turrets in and knocks them all over the floor. As I start to pick them up my dog(great dane) decides he wants to see what I am up to and sniffs the half filled turret board to the floor and proceeds to step on it. So now I am picking up turrets with one hand and trying to remove his bear sized paw from the board with the other hand. It's like a really bad version of twister going on. As I grab his paw he gets excited and wants to play which in turn makes him bang into the coffee table and spill my pop all over the place. Which he was more than happy to walk in as he is trying to play with me. Remind me to tell you about the time I was working on my vibrolux and got hit with over 300 volts...... it's all fun and games until you start to build an amp


Mike

[Jana]

LOL, that sounds like a scene out of a Dudley Moore movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZLM31yLYAk

[DonMoose]

Or the Jaques Tati classic _Mr Hulot's Holiday_
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buvaWDj0P9c

[mike7]

If I didn't laugh I woulda cried....haha

[Colossal]

Hahah, great story. It amazes me how much entropy is bottled up in amp building scenarios, just looking for the opportunity to unwind like a spring! Bins of small parts and hardware. Nature HATES small parts and high degrees of order

[mike7]

BTW. I love dudley Moore. I haven't seen any of his movies in a long time.

[Structo]

Sounds like the time I was working on an amp on our back patio.

It was a warm Summer day so I was taking advantage of it.

I was installing the tubes in a home brew amp and the 5U4GB rectifier was the last to go in.

I was turning it in my hand so I would line up the locating pin when I started to fumble it.
I almost caught it several times.
It was like slow motion as it finally escaped my grasp and shattered on the concrete patio.

I guess I could have gone on TV and ranted about it like Richard Sherman but instead I just shouted out
some appropriate epitaphs strung together in an unintelligible but satisfying outburst.

Thankfully the neighbors didn't call the police because it probably sounded like I was going to kill somebody......

[cbass]

My fingers have become so immune to heat I burned my finger soldering i guess and didn't even notice till I Accidently ripped the blister open at work

I knocked a nos 7591 of my bench it bounced 3 times on a tile floor I'm still using it

[morcey2]

My fingers have become so immune to heat I burned my finger soldering i guess and didn't even notice till I Accidently ripped the blister open at work

I knocked a nos 7591 of my bench it bounced 3 times on a tile floor I'm still using it

Our cat knocked a KT88 off the window sill onto a carpeted floor. It hit and bounced once. As I'm walking over to it, about 10 seconds later, I hear a really loud POP. There was a break near the base that extended up at about a 45-degree angle and around to the other side of the glass, back down to the base. The only saving grace being that it was my only KT88 was the fact that I prefered the way a recently acquired KT77 sounded in my P1Ex. The Kt88 was chinese and the glass was pretty thick so it must have landed on the carpet just right.

Matt

[M Fowler]

I was recently repairing an Ampeg SVT 300w you know the amp with six 6550 tubes heavey as hell and damn hard project just to get the amp chassis pulled along with control chassis at same time. It has umbilical cords going from amp chassis to control chassis what a PITA.

Well when I was all done I noticed I had snapped my soldering iron in half I remember knocking shit off my bench bunch I did not notice I had broke my iron WTF.

Lesson: How to take apart an SVT. Never fix another one, always say no!

Mark

[amplifiednation]

I slipped tying a zip tie yesterday and clocked myself just above the eye, I was seeing stars.

[DonMoose]

Drilling a PCB while it was still wired into chassis - bit case open just the other side of the board, with bits pointing up. Picked up far edge of board to peek under. Picked up a bit with my forehead.

[Reeltarded]

My right elbow grazed the tie point for the mains on a 50w 800. The drain had been on there but fell off. I reporduced the condition twice to find out how much voltage that was. Around 50v off 98v.

I hate electricity.

[beasleybodyshop]

I once accidentally clipped both leads of my cap discharger to chassis absentmindedly thinking I clipped to the cap. Yeah I think a few people might have accidentally done that lol.

[mike7]

Haha...great stories!! I was etching circuit boards to build effects pedals. So I sat my little Pyrex bowl with etching solution on my ceramic top stove...you know the kind that you can't tell which burner is on.....and then go back to my computer. After some time I go back to the stove and pick up the kitchen knife I used to stir the solution. I had laid it on the stove too. Apparently I had set the knife on the burner I had turned on instead of the Pyrex bowl. I burned my hand so bad I had to go to the hospital to be treated where they injected Me with Demerol a couple times. I proceeded to come home and send an email with 200 straight consonants to a friend. I was ripped out of my mind.