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I once fired up my family's stereo and failed to see that the cleaning lady had set a stack of LP's on top of the amplifier (an old Heathkit integrated tube amp from the early 60's). With the vents completely blocked, the finish was baked off a portion of the top. The amplifier survived; the LPs did not.

Years ago, I think around 1968, I got a tape recorder as a gift. I still remember the Japanish brand Takas Corder. Using my curiosity and a faithful screwdriver the equipment did not survive more than two weeks.

I have not now, nor have I ever, killed an audio component. However, my Clearaudio cartridge, which was nestled into a Graham Memorial tonearm, and sitting atop a Yorke 'table, ate it during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Did I mention that my Audio Research tube gear got crunched as well? Oh, wait! I almost forgot that sometime after the earthquake one of my dogs took a dump on my Bright Star isolator? Thinking back, it makes me wish that I had purchased a K-Mart rack system. On second thought . . .

I HAD A BEAUTIFUL CONRAD-JOHNSON PREAMP AND AMP. i ALLOWED THEM TO SIT IN MY LIVING ROOM WHILE I WAS AWAY AT WORK. SOME TOTALLY DERANGED INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT THAT ME BEING AWAY FROM MY HOME FOR THOSE EIGHT HOURS A DAY MEANT THAT I DID NOT LOVE MY TOYS ANYMORE AND TOOK THEM AWAY FROM ME. NOT SO MUCH AS A HOSTAGE NOTE. I'M SORRY, BUT THE REPLACEMENT THAT MY INSURANCE MONEY BOUGHT JUST CANNOT MATCH WHAT BEAUTY I WAS USED TO.

Ah, yes. I left an old, but workable, EICO HFT-90 kit FM Tuner on the floor after wife had asked me to move it. She stomped it to death. That taught me to listen to more than music.

Define "destroy."

A couple years ago I was moving and was putting my Hales floorstanders in the back of the car. I'm such an idiot! For some reason, I didn't tape the bottom of the box. One dropped out, hit the asphalt, and broke most of the rods that connect the grille covers and damaged the cabinet a bit. It cost $350 to fix it, but Hales did a great job, like new. I'm moving again soon and have to admit, I'm a little nervous.

One time, while removing a Bright Star Audio Little Rock from my CD player, it slipped from my fingers. It chipped one of the shelves on my Lovan rack and when it landed it cracked open and the insides were leaking out. The only bright side of the story was that it didn't make contact with my CD player and, thus, I only lost $100 as opposed to a lot more!

Phono cartridges and lack of eye hand coordination; need I say more?

I lent a Goldmund Mimesis 9 to a friend who hooked it to a pair of Apogees. This is all it takes to melt a Goldmund down!

I sweated into a Dynaco stereo 70 that was on; the sweat hit the terminals of the multicap, and it exploded in my face. Unpleasant, to say the least!

Thirty years ago, I mishandled a Shure M55E cartridge, bending the cantilever. Amazingly, it could still play.

Ran a Bedini 45/45 during an electrcal storm, before you know it smoke came out of both channels. It was toast.

I destroyed my first cheap reciver, i got back in Junior High School. After upgrading I decided to put it to use in my basement, and built a pair of speaker. I didn't match the impedence correctly, and left the reciver(rated at 8 ohms) to drive the speakers, that had an impedence of about .5 ohm. I pushed them hard, and eventually the reciever went up in smoke, literally.

We have cats. I have a tube amp. Cats love warmth. Tube amps are warm. Cats like to sleep on top of warm amp. Sometimes, cats throw up.

I shot it !

I've destroyed many cartridges -- mainly by trying to mount and adjust them beyond perfection.

My amp blew last year. Actually, I don't know why. I just switched it on as usual and gone. Fortunely, other component still survive.

I once sent a piece of audio equipment to another location via UPS . . .

While cleaning my LP-12, I accidentally broke the cantilever off my Arkiv (A). What a fool! This has resulted in my not being able to listen to my LP's for almost six weeks now while the cartridge is away being retipped. On the plus side, it will virtually be an Arkiv B (boron cantilever) when it returns. This is probably a common mistake, but wow, what an expensive one.

Back in the days when I was younger and not as smart, I had my old Pioneer Receiver doing party service with 3 speakers per channel. It played very loud into a very low impedence for quite awhile and then it just gave up. I took out the final and driver transistors. Expensive lesson learned!

I had a POS Aiwa bookshelf system that I killed bit by bit with normal use. NEVER AGAIN!

I got so sick of the weak sound coming out of an old pair of "full range" (yeah right), Sanyo loudspeakers I attached them to a 200 wpc amp and cranked 'em to 11. The voice coils cooked, the spiders shredded, and the woofers were kaput! Oh that was great!

It wasn't mine, but I witnessed the violent death of a friend's "speaker" my first year in college. This was in the days when I, nor any of my friends, knew anything about "high end" audio, and were more impressed by power figures than anything else. So when my buddy came back to the dorms one afternoon and announced that he had just bought "500 Watt speakers" out of the back of some guy's truck for $10, I was quite interested. He quickly hooked the little plastic cabinet/metal grill speakers up to his roommate's system (some forgotten receiver and turntable) and pulled out his favorite LP - Scorpions Live! and put ont he first track (can't remember the title anymore). Needless to say, it sounded like crap, but he kept on slowly increasing the volume, all the while "banging his head," obviously impressed with his purchase. Well, at about 12 o'clock on the volume knob, the right speaker lierally blew itself off the shelf with a puff of smoke, the fine coils of wire from its driver trailing behind. So much for 500 Watt speakers!

Like an idiot I set up my Adcom under my aqarium. Upon the insertion of a large piece of coral . . . well, you get the picture.

I put my DVD player on top of my Onkyo amplifier w/c tends to get very hot. So The DVD player got burned too

Are you crazy? Who would do such a thing?

Psyched to hear my first "high end system," with Meitner MTR mono blocks, in a newly remodeled (but apparently NOT re-wired...) room, I couldn't figure out why the R channel had this weird hum...not the amp...not the speaker . . . gee, why did my hand tingle when I disconnected that speaker cable, and touched the back of the amp case? Moral of the story: just 'cuz there's three holes in the outlet, and your cord plugs right in, NEVER assume proper grounding. I got off lucky.

The worst I ever did was torture my Magnepans with the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Psychocandy" LP which is 75% feedback. I had good gear, and it was fused, so I never really hurt it, but I made a necklace with all the fuses I blew. My friend, who was not an audiophile, had his college system, which was a Kenwood integrated amp from the 70's (with the obligatory giant analog meters) and a pair of Fisher speakers with 15" woofers. This amp was bright and upfront, but flat. It was "supposedly" 50 WPC. Well, he tortured those speakers with it, and after about six years, he succeded in turning those woofers back into their component parts, quite literally. I don't imagine he hears well now either.

These are all speaker tragedies I have been fortunate not to have destroyed anything else. Well, let's see, over the last 20 years I have done some really dumb stuff. There was the time I left my speaker covers off and the cat just couldn't resist them. Then I left my headphones where the puppy could get to them. Then I made the mistake of trying to move a component with everything on. Well, I pulled an RCA plug and lost a midrange with that one. It was louder than hell, I nearly jumped out of my skin and dropped what I was moving. Finally I had a friend over and after a few beers we put on Yes a little "too loud" and Rick's synthesizers just took a tweeter right out. I am much more careful now.