What is the most stupid thing you've ever done with music gear/computer etc?

Anything about MUSIC but doesn't fit into the forums above.
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Jace-BeOS wrote:
ghettosynth wrote: Not so for my friends and bandmates though, as previously discussed. Another friend owned a (small and local, but with paying customers) studio and he was using two of those horrible Alesis 16 channel mixers, the 1622. Well, he was lecturing his young assistant on the importance of proper cleaning procedures for electronic gear and they took one of the mixers apart. Now these mixers do not have proper pots, they have the carbon for the pots painted onto the PCB. That's why they were so cheap when they came out. My friend proceeds to use some corrosive electronics cleaner, I don't recall which one, to clean them and there are huge swaths of what look like black ink as he's wiping it down. At first he thought that it was just dirty and continued to lecture his charge that this was clearly an important thing to do. Then the PCBs were totally clean. He called Alesis and they explained to him that he had wiped off all of the potentiometers and that the board was essentially trash.

Fortunately for him, they were sympathetic, and also amused, and sent him a replacement board. Yes, I laughed at him.
Wow, that's kind of an awesome story, in a sadly amusing way. I'm glad Alesis took pity on him. I think the culture of demanding non-electronics experts to maintain PC hardware internals has had a net negative impact on culture. Really, only electronics experts should be disassembling electronics. The PC world pressures people to think it's normal to disassemble and "maintain" sealed electronics.
Well, he kind of fancied himself an "expert." Keep in mind that this was a long time ago when a 16 channel mixer for $799 was a steal. Today that's a laughably high price especially given the technology in use.

I remember being as arrogant with respect to my actual skills when I was about eight and offered to fix my sister's toy washing machine that she just got for Christmas. I managed to get it completely apart, there were a LOT of screws in that thing. Of course, I wasn't able to put it back together, nor fix it. I had no idea where most of those screws went. My parents were pissed and I got yelled at. On the bright side, my dad couldn't put it back together either and I was able use the battery box from her washing machine to fix my hot-wheels super booster. So it wasn't a total loss.

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jancivil wrote:
ghettosynth wrote: I would have made that agreement a bit more clear and I would have found someone that I could trust more to get it moved to safe ground much sooner than "months."
My but aren't you just adulting with that. f**k you. What was my context? I went into hospital for an extended stay and he said "For as long as you need to." I had mixed results with this individual at that point but, hey, I took him at his actual f**king word. If we were talking about a lawsuit, fine. We were not. I was not. I am not suing the asshole. It's a f**king closet at the motel. I came OUT of hospital lacking my left foot and my right big toe. And having given up my room in order to be in hospital for the duration I had no place to go and ended up on the street with one foot and four toes on it. But there was enough context for you to have given the thing a LITTLE more consideration. But no, of course not.
:( :hug:

I wish I had something better to offer than that.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Hink wrote:how's this, in 1978 I bought a 1972 Fender tele custom, black with maple neck just like the one Keef is often pictured with. In the early 80's I refinished it staining it and replacing the plastic knobs with chrome ones. I decided instead of buying a suitable metal guitar I would mod what turned out to be a very sought after year and model, true classic. Fist up was the bridge and pick-up because I wanted a brass bridge (yes did not match the bridge) and I added a new duncan 1/4 pounder. So far so good, no permanent changes, the owner before me had put schaller machine heads on it as well as a brass nut so it was on it's way. The 1/4 pounder did not do the job though so my next addition was a duncan invader in the neck spot (remember the tele custom has a single coil in the bridge and a humbucker in the neck).

Next up was another invader for the bridge, this meant modding the body as well as the bridge because the tele custom bridge also held the pup, no problem because the custom had the oversize pickguard which would cover that and I used a hacksaw blade in my jigsaw to cut the bridge (it was a little crooked but the was precedent there). That was great but I wanted more, I bought an EH Muff Fuzz, the very little one that plugged into your amp, stripped it out of it's case and put in holes in the pickguard for the switch and knobs because there was plenty of room for it in the guitar. At this point the battery was an issue so I split the big pickguard in two so I could access the electronic cavity to change the battery without removing the strings. Needless to say this turned out to be a very noisy guitar, but one luthier friend at a music store suggested I invented the first 50 watt guitar. My dad worked for Raytheon so he brought home some shielding tape and I did up the cavity well but it didn't help with the hiss and a friend of mine painted it black again.

I found a company (not emg) that made a switch pre-amp that was three position, no boost, +6db +0-20db and swapped that in and about this time Floyd Rose was doing well but the Kahlers had come out and I wanted a Kahler. I did buy one, at an old farm on a work bench with a drill and a chisel I hogged out the hole in the top of the guitar for the unit to fit and fortunately the neck with a Kahler didn't need the nut replaced, the locks were behind the nut. Now it was getting there and I had a ball doing divebombs with tons of feedback and I liked it better than a strat except for two things, the volume knob position and the body contours.

One afternoon before a band practice I went to my friend's dad's house and borrowed is hole saw and put a hole in the body to move the volume knob up snug to the strings and later I used a sander to add the body contours, I used a spray can to try and match the paint. Finally that same luthier friend had a Charvel neck laying around he gave me so I swapped the necks so now I had a Charvel tele...sort of...more like a thing that made noise like a guitar, but it did have the infamous three bolt neck so often I had to snap the neck back into place.

When all my gear got stolen that was taken too, I often wondered what happened to that guitar because it looked like utter shite but actually played well and was a metal machine (hiss machine too). I also wonder what I would have done with the money I could have sold that guitar for had I left it as it was when I bought it. :oops:
LOL! The transgressions of youth. One of my first bosses did something like this with a pre-cbs strat, or so he says, I never saw it. He figured it was worth more to just hold on to it so, AFAIK, he still has it under his bed, but we haven't talked for years.

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Was a happy bedroom musician, then joined a forum on the internet, which was so big and evil that I got a mental disease called "Gear Acquisition Syndrome". Productivity went away, I got bankrupt, marriage was over, couldn't afford the house and car anymore. Still have a big load of awesome DAW's and vst(i)'s though.
No band limits, aliasing is the noise of freedom!

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Jace-BeOS wrote:Hmm... I once punched a computer keyboard until my fist was bloody and damaged. The keyboard was totally destroyed.

I don't think I'd ever trash music equipment. Just computers. They're basically asking for it... ;-)
I beat the shit out of my first MBP due mainly to the Network Diagnostics behavior of OSX with a bad connection.
Eventually it quit working. I was beginning to be quite sick in 2015. 2009 computer so it wasn't going to get much older.

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resynthesis wrote:
donkey tugger wrote:
vurt wrote:
donkey tugger wrote:
Nocturnal909 wrote:I left the side panel off my desk top and a mouse pissed and died on the sound card....
Then I goggled mouse died in my computer....
Apparently Deadmous5 computer beat me to his name first!
Those bastards...

Back in the mists of time when I was a student and lived in a shared house, a mouse died inside the back of the fridge. It was the most disgusting smell which we couldn't work out was coming from. :scared:
on the bright side, free meat!
But...would it last for the week? That, as you know is always the important question.
mftw.jpg
Crikey, I lived pretty near there when I was a student. Happy days...
I'm assuming in the halls that used to be Carr Mills, opposite the Primrose pub?

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jancivil wrote:
Jace-BeOS wrote:Hmm... I once punched a computer keyboard until my fist was bloody and damaged. The keyboard was totally destroyed.

I don't think I'd ever trash music equipment. Just computers. They're basically asking for it... ;-)
I beat the shit out of my first MBP due mainly to the Network Diagnostics behavior of OSX with a bad connection.
Eventually it quit working.
I want to say "funny thing is...", but we're talking about trashing equipment in rage, which I don't want to celebrate. That said:

Funny thing is, the keyboard I destroyed was:

1. A cheap Logitech dealie
2. One of two
3. Connected to a PC, which already had my rage for various reasons, and therefore was
4. Calculated as an "acceptable loss" in the split second I paused with it raised over my head to bring down on the desk, starting its destruction.

Once I cleaned up, I plugged in the duplicate keyboard and went on with things. That I actually had a moment of rationalization when I did it -that it somehow was ok to do- which I recognized in the moment... it's one of my less shameful outbursts, but it's still embarrassing and I try to keep myself in check by keeping these memories alive. :oops:

I'd like to say the rage was directed at Windows, but that was just background. The immediate rage was due to mindfuckery wrought by another person (very important to me at the time) in chat. Still, I consciously followed through with the impulse because the machine in question was a source of considerable irritation (as was the medium of communication). Still, per this thread, it was stupid (and wasteful) of me. :oops:

I almost did this and more to my last two PCs. My first Mac was a year later, so who knows, but I have yet to be driven to rage by my Mac experiences to the same extent as my decades of PC use. I was far less self-controlled between 2007-2010 (thanks to an SSRI), yet I never harmed either of my MacBooks (nor any living creature).

(Keep screwing with us, Apple, and I'll develop the same rage at your stuff)

I threw my original iPhone enough to dent the back (talk about stupid), but it was because Mail crashed and erased hours of composed messages thanks to the addition of cut/copy/paste (iOS 3?) that was buggy and never fixed for that generation (planned obsolescence already starting).

The iPhone survived, partially due to a great case, and partially due to good design (try that with today's iPhones). Hell, it survived after being fully laundered (more stupidity on my part, but totally accidental). It only got retired a month ago by the person I gave it to when I bought an iPhone 4 (who's iOS version fixed the Mail bug).
jancivil wrote:2009 computer so it wasn't going to get much older.
My surviving MacBook Pro is also a 2009. Was yours the 5,5 or another model? After the death of my other one, I was a lot more cautious about how hot I let it run.

(As an aside: My dead MacBook Pro is the 3,1 model which committed suicide by NVidia GPU defect, something I might've gotten replaced free had Apple bothered to contact owners when they started their lawsuit with NVidia and the silent recall of these units. I didn't kill it!)
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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it was something point 1, so I guess 5.1? seems like 4.1 but maybe that was the Mac Pro. Yeah, I think so. May have come out end of 2008. I was tough on it before I got mean with it. This is a 7.1. I'm used to the idiot Network Diagnostic now. Actually I have less pressure on me than I did in 2015 weirdly enough.

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donkey tugger wrote:
resynthesis wrote:
donkey tugger wrote:
vurt wrote:
donkey tugger wrote:
Nocturnal909 wrote:I left the side panel off my desk top and a mouse pissed and died on the sound card....
Then I goggled mouse died in my computer....
Apparently Deadmous5 computer beat me to his name first!
Those bastards...

Back in the mists of time when I was a student and lived in a shared house, a mouse died inside the back of the fridge. It was the most disgusting smell which we couldn't work out was coming from. :scared:
on the bright side, free meat!
But...would it last for the week? That, as you know is always the important question.
mftw.jpg
Crikey, I lived pretty near there when I was a student. Happy days...
I'm assuming in the halls that used to be Carr Mills, opposite the Primrose pub?
No it was a private landlord's house.

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ghettosynth wrote: if they, in fact, agreed to hold it for some unstated period of time
Can you even fvcking read? Or were you just too eager to post this garbage? I said, certainly before this asshole post, that he said "For as long as you need to."
Unequivocal.

And whether I said this or not, I lived there for over 8 yrs. I'm good with my assessment 'asshole' just as I am here. FOAD.

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jancivil wrote:it was something point 1, so I guess 5.1? seems like 4.1 but maybe that was the Mac Pro. Yeah, I think so. May have come out end of 2008. I was tough on it before I got mean with it. This is a 7.1. I'm used to the idiot Network Diagnostic now. Actually I have less pressure on me than I did in 2015 weirdly enough.
That's good (the reduced pressure). I wouldn't have done the bad shit I did back in the 2006-2010 period without being under various hostilities...
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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jancivil wrote:
ghettosynth wrote: I would have made that agreement a bit more clear and I would have found someone that I could trust more to get it moved to safe ground much sooner than "months."
My but aren't you just adulting with that. f**k you. What was my context? I went into hospital for an extended stay and he said "For as long as you need to." I had mixed results with this individual at that point but, hey, I took him at his actual f**king word. If we were talking about a lawsuit, fine. We were not. I was not. I am not suing the asshole. It's a f**king closet at the motel. I came OUT of hospital lacking my left foot and my right big toe. And having given up my room in order to be in hospital for the duration I had no place to go and ended up on the street with one foot and four toes on it. But there was enough context for you to have given the thing a LITTLE more consideration. But no, of course not.
Jan, you and I had horrific tragedies at the same time, we spoke then and I remember those conversations with great fondness as your words helped me a lot. What happened to you is so unfair to fight back from a condition only to have this happen. I can relate as I had a similar condition (not exactly the same though), I turned it around in 93 and in 95 had a job driving a school bus, at the end of the school year I had a job lined up driving a city bus starting at 40k a year (in 95 which was good starting pay) with a great pension in 20 years, all I had to do was get through the school year. Then an 8 year old girl fell on the ice under my bus, no one saw it and it crushed my life, I get it jan.

I apologize in advance for how you are going to take this but I can put it no other way, what happened to me, what happened to you does not give us license to be abusive to others. GS said nothing wrong, I see in no way was he being malicious and there is no reason to be jumping down his throat.

Did GS know about your foot? I remember when you told us your stuff was stolen I suggested your friends could start you a go fund me, you said my heart was in the right place. I'm willing to bet that GS's heart is in the right place too and he didn't want to hurt you. I suspect your understandable anger and frustration just got the better of you, but it wasn't his fault and he wasn't giving you an f-you (nor am I). I had my door kicked in in 88 and lost all my gear, I know that feeling and it sux, I ache for you. I absolutely encourage you to come here and get support from this community because there is magic to it, trust me it's there. But please dont put it on the community and if someone is being a total jerk to you remember that is likely how they live their entire life which is far more their problem init? You made another post making it sound like KvR has a vendetta against you but you do have a rep for being hostile toward anyone who disagrees with you and perhaps you can try a little toward improving that.

I think your leaving now would be a terrible thing for both KvR but please remember we are all contemporaries, peers, in this together and not enemies. The people who wrong us by doing these nasty things like stealing from us and betraying our trust are our enemies, we need to support each other. I ask you to take these words in the constructive way they were intended.
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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jancivil wrote: I think I'm going to move away from KVR in a big way after today.
please don't :hug:

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Hink wrote:[ I'm willing to bet that GS's heart is in the right place too and he didn't want to hurt you. I suspect your understandable anger and frustration just got the better of you, but it wasn't his fault and he wasn't giving you an f-you (nor am I).
I'm 100% sure you are 100% wrong. "I think [...] just got the better of you". Well there it is. It has to be me; misogyny? That's as fair as you pretending to read me. I posted a link to a thread up there. Check it out. It's serious f**king abuse (of the forum and of a person which just happens to be me, who is always walking on eggshells while asshole do shit like that); and there is a history of it with ghettopunk (yep that crosses the line, don't it? Is fair fair, if so ban him along with me. But fair is a strange problem here, and it's you.) going back years. I think you're alright and essentially a good man but here is just another strong signal you aren't built to moderate KVR, and I'm being sacrosanct in that description. Leave me alone.

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"please remember we are all contemporaries, peers, in this together and not enemies."

That's rich, given the context. THERE IT IS. It's me you feel needs to see that, never ghettosynth; after all the abuse which is still here to see it's me needs to see that. And don't even condescend to me, I'm aware.

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