There's a group on Facebook for Synth DIY (no relation).
Someone wanted to build a mute circuit that detected power up/down. He wanted to avoid the expense of a step down transformer, so he directly applied the utility line power 220VAC to a voltage divider to get the voltage down to 5VAC to apply to the mute circuit. I warned him not to build the circuit because it was a fire hazard and he neglected to include a CRUCIAL COMPONENT that every EE knows about, and it was blatantly obvious that he has no business doing circuit design.
The missing crucial component? THE FUSE.
MC
On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 1:11 PM Terry Bowman via Synth-diy <synth-diy@synth-diy.org> wrote:
________________________________________________________On Jan 25, 2026, at 2:46 PM, Roman Sowa via Synth-diy <synth-diy@synth-diy.org> wrote:I haven't heard any buzz because the blast was immediately after powering it up.Paging Harry Bissel and his stories. I seem to recall that he did heavy duty testing of industrial strength equipment with equally spectacular failures.Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"“...the book said something astonishing, a very big thought. The stars, it said, were suns but very far away. The Sun was a star but close up.”—Carl Sagan, "The Backbone Of Night", Cosmos, 1980
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