I recently stopped into a small local music store looking for banana plugs for 
some speaker cables I was converting from 1/4". The confused look on the face of 
the young kid behind the counter told me that he didn't know a banana plug from 
an apple jack, so after a brief description he went off to go check with his 
boss. I poked around the store in the meantime and didn't see any, so I wasn't 
surprised when he returned a minute later shaking his head no, but it's what he 
said that somehow made the trip worth it anyhow: "Sorry dude, no nano plugs."

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I used to frequent the local dump in days gone by with an eye open for any old 
electronic bits, one day I was talking to the manager and spied a box on the 
floor in the office, asked him what it was, turns out a lady had dropped off her 
old "broken" amp, because when she had called the local electronics shop they 
had told her it wasn't worth repairing and she should buy a new one. I asked 
what the problem was and was told that the lady said the left channel wasn't 
working. So I offered up $5 for it and walked off with a nice, fairly new Denon 
amp in original box and plastic bag, foam end caps and manual. I got it home, 
plugged a CD player and some speakers in to it, hit play, sure enough, no sound 
out of the left speaker. Hmmm, maybe if I just turn this balance control to the 
middle and sure enough... good as new.

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I recently went into a Radio Shack to buy a 500k pot. They didn't seem to have 
one, so I asked the man if he could order me one. He said he had never heard of 
one and the best thing he could tell me to do was to go to an electronics store. 
I just shook my head and walked away...

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I normally only deal with music gear: organs, keyboards, amps, etc, and kept 
getting pestered by a friend of a really good friend and customer of mine, to 
fix his incredibly old tube Hi-Fi. My customer eventually persuaded me to have a 
go at it, pointing out that the guy was a real pain in the rear about his 
precious tube amps. The thing was really past it, the output transformer had 
fried and the replacement parts were so hideously expensive that he almost had a 
fit when I gave him the quote.

"Can't you just use other less expensive parts?" he asked.

I thought for a moment and said that I could possibly get the price down a fair 
bit but it might not ever sound the same. He happily agreed and I set to work.

I left all the tubes in place and ripped out the whole of the rest of the 
thing's guts, replacing it with a solid state preamp and a single chip 2x50 watt 
output stage, complete with a large resistor in the un-mute legs so it turned on 
rather slowly. I then put LEDs under all the tubes, powered using a feed from 
that same leg; the effect was visually convincing, very pretty, so I phoned the 
guy to say it was done and my old friend brought him round the back of the shop 
that afternoon. I booted it up on the bench in front of him with an old deck and 
one of my old Pink Floyd albums on it. He shook his head and I guessed I'd blown 
a couple of days hard graft, but no, to our amazement he just smiled and said,

"You just can't beat that true vintage sound, can you?"

Then he paid up and took it away. He still boasts about his old "original" sound 
and his audiophile mates love it. We haven't the heart to tell him. He's happy!

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My favorite from the Japanese is the warning on an old Pioneer receiver: "being 
careful not to connect the red wire to the black wire or a terrible evilness may 
occur"

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In the first days when I got curious about tubes I asked the guy at the local 
Radio Shack store do they sell vacuum tubes. He looked at me very strangely and 
said:

"You can get some very good vacuum cleaners at the mall across the street!"

This was when they offered tubes in their catalog...

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You know you are spending too much time at the bench, when you need a $5,000 
loan but you figure $4k7 is probably "close enough".

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A phone company guy buys a rifle and promptly goes to his local shooting range 
to test his abilities. The shooting range attendant hangs a target at which the 
phone company guy proceeds to fire six shots. The attendant then takes the un-
hit target down and yells to the phone guy, "All shots fired were misses!"

The phone company guy looks at his rifle, covers the end of the barrel with his 
hand and proceeds to blow off one of his fingers. At which point he yells to the 
attendant, "Everything works fine here, it must be at your end!"

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Back in the early 70's when I first got into the electronics hobby, Radio shack 
used sell lots of parts, and some of their employees actually knew stuff about 
electronics. A few years ago I went in and bought a few pots and mentioned to 
the sales guy that the quality of the pots was a little better than they had 
been in the past. His response was "electronics is one thing I don't know 
anything about". Guess that explains why he was working at Radio Shack.

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Some time ago, while I was doing repairs in a workshop, the telephone rang. I 
answered it and the lady on the other end told me her stereo had gone defective 
and blew a fuse. I agreed it must be defective and suggested that I pick it up 
for repair. Then she said: "I already replaced that fuse several times until I 
found what causes the problem." I asked her what she found to be defective and 
she replied: "The power switch, because every time I toggle the power switch the 
new fuse blows, too!" I had serious problems to keep a straight face...

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A couple of years ago my girlfriend and I want to get her piano tuned. Not sure 
where best to get hold of a piano tuning guy, we go down the local musical 
instrument store and say "We're trying to get hold of a piano tuner, can you 
help?" The guy behind the counter disappears out the back of the shop for 10 
minutes. Eventually he returns and says "We haven't got any in stock at the 
moment, do you want me to find out if we can order one?"

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A guy walks into my repair shop carrying an old guitar amplifier. I ask him what 
the problem was. He said if he could plug it in, he could show me. He plugs it 
in and turns it on. Smoke immediately starts pouring out of the amp. I turned it 
off quickly but the amp is still smoking even more fiercely than before. Flames 
start coming out of the amp and I take immediate action to get the amp outside 
and extinguish the fire. The customer then says, "See! That's what is does."

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A guy brings me a "fuzz box" to fix. He says "I plug it in and I get some hum 
out of it so it can't be damaged too bad." I open it up, and there is a charred 
hole in the board, and a 741 op-amp with the cover BLOWN OFF (that's how I 
identified the chip). I ask, "What happened to this thing?" He says "I was 
playing a gig and the battery died, so I took the battery clip from an old 
transistor radio, and the cord off a lamp that was lying around..."

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About 2 years ago I was working as a computer technician in a company. One day a 
customer called and he was complaining that he couldn't send a fax with his 
brand new computer. I asked him to tell me the steps he followed in order to 
send the fax and he told me:

"I connect the line to the modem. Next I open the communications program. Then I 
take the document and put it in front of the computers screen. Finally I press 
the send button in the communications program but nothing happens."

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While trying to discharge the filters on an amplifier with my homemade clip lead 
to resistor to probe lead discharger, I noticed the caps would not discharge. 
Each time I apply the probe lead to the positive side, it keeps on sparking and 
keeps on arcing. What is this? Why won't these caps discharge?

It turns out the amp was still turned on.

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How about the Heavy Metal kid that brought a 16-channel mixer into the shop with 
the complaint that "it doesn't work". Turns out he and his buddies were running 
the SPEAKER OUTPUT from a Marshall Stack directly into the Mic inputs. When one 
channel stopped, they would simply move on to the next one. Sixteen input ICs 
later, they decided that the board was no good.

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My favorite trick is to write "16-ohm speaker cables" on a piece of paper before 
I walk into a Radio Shack. With serious face I tell them I am supposed to get 
16-ohm speaker cables. I show them the note, "See." Nine times out of ten, they 
trot off to find them.

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A customer brings in a stereo receiver for repair saying the left channel is 
dead. Bench checks OK, no problem. Customer picks it up but calls back later 
with same complaint. Over the phone the shop reviews speaker hook-up, has 
customer swap speakers around, reviews source hook-up, swap sources, etc. 
Problem remains with left channel. OK, bring everything in this time.

When customer arrives the tech tells him to set it up exactly as he was doing at 
home. He proceeds to hook it up properly and then starts adjusting controls. 
"OK, I like lots of bass (cranks it all the way up), lots of treble (cranks it 
all the way up), and lots of balance..."