What's the best mistake you ever made?

[flintstoned]

Just wondering how many of you had happy accidents like my bmp. I built it on perf, with 3 dpdt switches for mods and crammed it into a 1590. Naturally it had issues, with 18 wires just for the pots and switches. After ripping the mods out and putting it in a second box, it worked great but when it ended up in its third enclosure with my other bastard builds I had a wire loose again, fixed it, tested it and now I got a crazy synth type muff that can hold a note for an hour. No exaggeration! Literally will feedback a note forever! I would love to figure out what happened but I will never open that box again because I don't wanna lose it!

[CynicalMan]

Not quite the same thing, but I love building stompboxes with two throw toggle switches. That way, you can get wacky sound by setting them in the middle, although that can sometimes be difficult. For example, I have an envelope filter with two such switches, and when both are set to their centres, I can get this crazy splatty envelope fuzz that decays into a loud clean tone. 

[R.G.]

There was this girl back in college...

[zencafe]

There was this girl back in college...

hahahaha...

[GibsonGM]

Actual mistake? Probably forgetting to remove a jumper I'd put across an amp's filter cap before firing it up again....nice, pretty gray smoke!!  ha ha....

[trjones1]

I made a Dirty Sanchez once with a germanium transistor for Q2.  It sounded decent on the breadboard so I put it on vero and boxed it up.  When completed it sounded amazing, one of the wildest fuzzes I've ever heard with crazy frequency generation and squeals and all kinds of cool stuff.  I tried to recreate it, but never could, until I looked at the original circuit board and saw that I had soldered the germ in backwards.  For whatever reason that mistake gave me one of my sweetest pedals.

[Boogdish]

"yeah, I can definitely fix that by your gig on Friday, I guarantee it."

[Quackzed]

Coming here and getting brainjacked into fx-perimentation 

[Renegadrian]

Resistors, caps, boards, and various components at Banzai - 22€
A bottle of Jagermeister by your side - 10€
A decent soldering iron - 15€
Spending lots of time and dedication filling a board, fire it up with anxiety and not getting any sound...Realizing that you forgot to put trannies/opamps in their sockets!!! PRICELESS!!!

[gtudoran]

+1 Renegadrian ... Many times, also i heared that they don't make any sound without any power source.

[Talon5051]

A bottle of Jagermeister by your side - 10€

Realizing that you forgot to put trannies/opamps in their sockets!!!

That was the only mistake you made?  I think I would be lucky if I did not burn my house down.  LOL

[Renegadrian]

+1 Renegadrian ... Many times, also i heared that they don't make any sound without any power source.

Yeah! 

[mac]

mmhh... i was experimenting with joe davisson discrete opamp, i connected something in the wrong way and now i have a nice octave up pedal.

mac

[elenore19]

...now I got a crazy synth type muff that can hold a note for an hour. No exaggeration! Literally will feedback a note forever! I would love to figure out what happened but I will never open that box again because I don't wanna lose it!

Sound clips?

[petemoore]

  Like you, I wish I knew.
  It started death as a Fuzzface build.
  It began to pass signal, and it was thick sounding.
  I fixed it to be a FF but always wanted to do an A/B of the 'ol un-de-bugged face with a booster on the end [had low output too of course].
  Unlike you, I fixed it, forever.