BAD THINGS GONE GOOD

How many times have we heard about good things gone bad? Well, I recently experienced the opposite.

I had a mishap the other day. I was moving one of my stereo speakers when I inadvertently stepped on the wire. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that it jerked on the connector which momentarily shorted out. At that point, the audio died. Oops.

Upon investigation, I found a blown fuse in the stereo. And unfortunately, that fuse had blown because the output transistors were fried. That left me with a couple options: 1) Buy the parts to fix it, or 2) Use parts from the seldom used rear channel to repair the front channel circuit, or 3) Buy a new stereo.

I priced a new stereo on-line. I discovered that a stereo with turntable inputs (which I need to someday achieve my goal of converting all my records to MP3s) is an expensive rarity.

So I priced new parts. They were not terribly expensive, but I was concerned that it might require more parts than first thought due to undiagnosed hidden damage. I further toyed with the idea of simply converting my surround sound receiver to a 2-channel stereo, which would allow me to use parts from the rear channel to repair the front channel. But it seemed such a shame to have rear channel speakers that I could no longer use.

Then it occurred to me to check eBay. I found one stereo that would work very well for me. Except the price was $1000 – used!! After a LOT more searching, I found a receiver similar to my bad one. However, it was from from a junk electronics recycler and advertised as "non-working, for parts or repair." I decided since the price was what I would spend for parts anyway, I would put in a bid. It also occurred to me that since this was a better unit than my current one, perhaps I could use parts from my blown receiver to fix this new one, rather than the other way around.

I won the bid. And guess what? This ‘non-working’ unit only needed a master reset! So I ended up with a working stereo for the price of used parts. And not just a working stereo, but one with digital audio inputs. I was needing a digital input and was on the verge of ordering an analog to digital converter. However, due to my speaker mishap, I ended up with a much better solution for slightly less money!

It is not every day that something bad turns out well in the end. But that was the case this time.