Greatest (S)hits

[Cozybuilder]

Amp on standby- and most of the others mentioned.

[Transmogrifox]

Last night I finished up a little JFET fuzz and checked all the biases with my DMM, everything looking good.

Get hooked up and ready to rock 'n' roll but not even noise coming out of the thing.

Closer look my cable was plugged in as far as the sleeve contact on the jack.  I had pushed until I felt "click" and considered it good.

Got the cables completely plugged in and I was jammin'.  Sometimes the satisfaction is greater when you have a moment of "oh sh**" before it all starts going.

So to add to the list:
"Cable not plugged in all the way"

[duck_arse]

and lets not forget - where's my fecking signal? - the cro input coupling switch still on "GND".

[anotherjim]

Not stompbox related....
Midi cables not pushed in far enough.
Midi out connected to midi out, midi in connected to midi in - common newbie error... and not so newbie...

No sound out of mixer mains. Signal on meters - check, channel mute - check, channel routed to main - check. WTF? Long period of head scratching. Hold on, why is the pfl light lit? Hunt for a pfl button on somewhere on the board - solved!

[Transmogrifox]

No sound out of mixer mains. Signal on meters - check, channel mute - ...

Then mute the unmuted channel and add more confusion to the problem..I've done that

[Jdansti]

Not stompbox related....
Midi cables not pushed in far enough.
Midi out connected to midi out, midi in connected to midi in - common newbie error... and not so newbie...

No sound out of mixer mains. Signal on meters - check, channel mute - check, channel routed to main - check. WTF? Long period of head scratching. Hold on, why is the pfl light lit? Hunt for a pfl button on somewhere on the board - solved!

I repaired the bass player's amp at the last minute before a gig by pushing the power cord connector all of the way into the socket on the back of the amp. He was about to drive home and get another amp which would have delayed the beginning of the show by an hour.

[stallik]

I've never:
Forgotten the IC's
Wired transistors backwards
Used the wrong value component
Swapped input and output jacks
Had a short from messy soldering
Forgotten to earth
Mislabelled controls
Wired a stompswitch 90 degrees out
Made reversed pcbs
Mounted sockets to close to case, pot etc so it shorts when a jack is inserted
Lied

[duck_arse]

stallik, I'd vote for you.

[cab42]

A person I know remotely, just found out that the reason why the noomerang wah he just mounted in the wah shell didn't work. It was turned upside down and the guitar was connected to the output and the amp to the input.

Personally, I wouldn't do anything as silly....

[Jamdog]

A person I know remotely, just found out that the reason why the noomerang wah he just mounted in the wah shell didn't work. It was turned upside down and the guitar was connected to the output and the amp to the input.

Personally, I wouldn't do anything as silly....

If it was upside-down,  was it a Haw instead of a Wah?

[cab42]

If it was upside-down,  was it a Haw instead of a Wah?

No, the person in questions remembered to turn the speaker upside down as well, in order to compensate for the haw-effect.

[Gargaman]

I'm a (s)hitter too. Didn't miss anything above in my short carreer.
Also tried hard to hear through the speaker wirh a phone jack connected.

[balkanizeyou]

I've just finished a Tubescreamer TS-808 build (never bothered to build one before, but decided to check out the legendary sound). For the input and output buffers I used whatever npn transistors I had laying around, and after connecting it to the amp and turning it on it almost blew my head off - it was so loud and distorted and noisy as hell. At first I thought "damn, this the smooth overdrive people often use as a booster?", but I came to a conclusion that it's not the TS-808 design that is crappy, rather I must have made something wrong. After an hour of checking bias voltages, looking for solder bridges and checking the components I realized that I used BC557 - a pnp version of BC547 I use very often

[Jdansti]

Has anyone had a good mistake, where you did something unintentionally and it improved the sound or usefulness of an effect?

[bluebunny]

Has anyone had a good mistake, where you did something unintentionally and it improved the sound or usefulness of an effect?

Does rendering your lead guitarist silent count as "improved"? 

[potul]

Not related to diy,... but that one was epic.

I was playing with my band in a show, we had no engineer, we were managing the mixer ourselves from the stage. Everything trough PA, no amps.
We had an issue with the monitors, so between songs I muted the PA and left the monitors only to troubleshoot the problem. Once solved we started playing the next song, and it was a very energetic one. The crowd was not that excited... so we thought something was wrong with them... maybe not drunk enough?. At the end of the song we realized we didn't unmute the PA, so only the monitors were on.... We were the only ones hearing ourselves for a full song !!   

[Jdansti]

Has anyone had a good mistake, where you did something unintentionally and it improved the sound or usefulness of an effect?

Does rendering your lead guitarist silent count as "improved"? 

Especially if I'm your lead guitarist.

[whoisalhedges]

I repaired the bass player's amp at the last minute before a gig by unplugging it.

FYP. 

[nickbungus]

I've just bought some copper clad board, printed and ironed on my layout then gone to dip it in ferric chloride and realised I've bought 2 sided board.

[Kevin Mitchell]

The other night I was so stoked to tinker with new parts I grabbed the wrong transformer which lead to a smoking IC and my first melted breadboard.

No shame in being excited