Have you ever been this dumb ??

[Mark Hammer]

On my Ross Phaser, I left a wire too long on the copper side of the board (actually I didn't cut it at all).  The wire was long enough to jump across 2 traces.  The phaser worked fine pre-box.  Then I boxed it up and the wire got pressed (and shorted) across the 2 other copper traces.  My boxed up phaser sounded horrible, like some kind of bad vibrato thing.  Finally I took it apart and found the offending wire. 

Hands up, everyone who has ever had to say "It worked fine before I boxed it up."  Am I allowed to stick up more than two hands?

[Dragonfly]

On my Ross Phaser, I left a wire too long on the copper side of the board (actually I didn't cut it at all).  The wire was long enough to jump across 2 traces.  The phaser worked fine pre-box.  Then I boxed it up and the wire got pressed (and shorted) across the 2 other copper traces.  My boxed up phaser sounded horrible, like some kind of bad vibrato thing.  Finally I took it apart and found the offending wire. 

Hands up, everyone who has ever had to say "It worked fine before I boxed it up."  Am I allowed to stick up more than two hands?

hands, feet, misc appendages.... 

[phaeton]

I'm pretty good for wiring pots backwards.  I put in an SPDT switch to select diode pairs, boxed up the effect and marked the positions wrong.

Recently I went outside (I don't have a garage) to drill some holes for a tremolo.  I ran out of daylight, my pencil markings on the PVC got hard to read and i misread the sizes for the input/output jacks.  Not enough for it to dawn on me when I picked up the 7/8" drill bit, but enough to make the 5/8" jacks float around in their holes.  Good thing those drain caps are cheap.

The one about the LED/LDR one is a classic.  I didn't get bit by that but i thought about it in that context-  "I wonder how many guys pull their hair out when they should take it into a dark room..." etc..

[jmusser]

All my brain farts are usually way worse than that!  Mine Usually takes a full cranialrectomy! If that's worst you ever do, you're in pretty good shape.

[gaussmarkov]

i'm always good for a reversed transistor ... obviously.   

[Hal]

i did the exact same thing with a fuzz face clone. 

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

i think that i win. when i was making my crash sync, i finished it at about 4:30 am and was thus pretty beat. i plugged it in and fired it up, but it didn't work. i turned in.

next day, i go back after it at about 1:00 am. the result is that i discover the primary problem. this problem is that i have not yet placed the chips in their sockets.

this is where it gets interesting.

in order to solve this problem i proceed to desolder my sockets and then install both chips upside down. believe it or not, it didn't work. i realized my error, and destroyed both chips getting them free. after resoldering the sockets, i placed fresh parts in and it still didn't work. that was when i realized that i had plugged my battery into an effect pedal residing on my breadboard... and then, with that fixed, i had the noise. 

yep. takes it's toll on you.