Hooray! I finally broke something.

Kindof a big one, too. I've been building little synth modules and stuff for a few years now, and thanks largely to friends showing me the proper way to do things, I've enjoyed a very high degree of success. In fact for the most part, stuff just works first time. This is a far cry from my first attempt at this, many years ago, which was to build a MIDI thru box from instros in E&MM. I remember PJ "LeChug" Ford retreating rapidly just before I switched it on, and insisting I didn't connect it to any of *his* gear. Well the thing only functioned as a way of freaking out my DX7, so I gave up for decades.

More recently I've been recording vocals and guitar at the house and so decided to "save money" by building my own preamps and compressors etc. Again this turned out well, with the Neve 1072 and LA-2A clones working first time. I turned my attention then to the 1176 compressor, and got a bunch of bits and pieces.

Time came to test the power supply. Wired up the power transformer, powered up, waited for a few minutes, heard some creaking from its plastic covering, thought it was just expanding from getting warm, etc. I was right. After about 10 minutes there was a loud CRACK and jolly nice molten metal smell. Fab!

I looked again at the wiring instros I'd followed. 220v. Hmmm.... I'd grounded the centre taps on the primary side, resulting in basically a short. I'm impressed with the Lindberg Y236106 - it did its best for as long as it could. Happily there's no real damage to the 1176 board, as far as i can see, so i can just try again with another one. Wheeee!