@terry9 and @sierratrails: I’m amongst friends!
In the spring of 1973 I paid my first visit to one of the new high end shops that were popping up around the U.S.A. in the wake of The Absolute Sound joining J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile (Gordon was the mag’s founder and chief---often sole---reviewer) to serve the hi-fi appetites of we boomer generation new audiophiles. The shop (named Audio Arts) was located in Livermore, CA---about halfway between my town of San Jose and the state’s capital, Sacramento (where my mom was born and raised), and was owned and operated by a fantastic guy named Walter Davies, later known for his Last Factory record and tape care products..
Also paying his first visit to the shop that day was Bill Johnson of Audio Research. Talk about good luck! Bill was a pilot with his own little plane, and he flew himself and a complete ARC/Magneplanar system from Minnesota to Livermore, to install in the shop’s excellent listening room (one of the best I’ve ever been in). Back in 1971 I had seen an ARC Dual 50 in San Jose’s best hi-fi shop, but at that time the name meant nothing to me.
The Dual 50 was driving a pair of ESS Transtatic I loudspeakers, for which I was lusting (they unfortunately cost $1200/pr, which at that time this starving musician couldn’t sell enough blood to buy 
). The Transtatics featured three RTR ESL tweeters, the first ESL’s I had heard. They reproduced the sound of cymbals as I had never before heard. I now own a pair of them, bought used in 1982 for $400.
Anyway, I spend a few hours listening to Walter and Bill talking all things hi-fi as Bill installed the system, getting myself a nice education. The system was a pair of Magneplanar Tympani T-I loudspeakers bi-amped with D51 and D75 amplifiers, an ARC SP-3 pre-amp, and a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 with a Decca Blue pickup mounted on a prototype ARC tone arm not yet in production. That was the most consequential day of my hi-fi life! Having heard that system, I just HAD to get it for myself.
Later that year Walter installed the exact same system in my listening room, minus the ARC arm. I paid for the arm upfront, but used a Decca International Arm (on loan from Walter) as work on the ARC prototype proceeded. When the arm was cancelled (it never went into production), I got myself an SME 3009 Mk.2 improved. In using the Decca arm I learned that I don’t care for unipivots.
I was happy with the system for about a year, but when I heard the new Fulton Industries Model J loudspeaker---which used the same RTR ESL tweeters as the ESS Transtatic (as did the original Wilson WAMM, along with a pair of KEF B139 woofers, also the woofer in the Transtatic), though six of them, and a dynamic woofer in a transmissionline enclosure---well, the failings of the Tympani’s became glaringly obvious. Out came the Tympani’s, in went the Model J’s (the sale of the T-I’s and D51 paid for them).
But the honeymoon was short lived; I quickly learned that while the J’s were indeed more transparent than the Tympani’s, and had greater low end weight and extension, the vocals and instruments sounded like they were being squeezed out of three boxes (look up a pic of the Fulton’s to get the picture). Images produced by the Maggies were spread out before me, floating in space, free of the Mylar diaphragms producing them. With the Fultons, those same images were coming through little holes in the wall at the location of the speakers. I learned I was a planar man.
I now own the Transtatics, a pair of Old Quads, a pair of Tympani T-IVa (bought from Kent of Electrostatic Solutions), and two pair of Eminent Technology’s: both the LFT-4 and LFT-8b. Plus Rythmik Audio and GR Research subs. What I need now is a room big enough for them all .
For those who don’t care for this long-winded tale, my apologies. My last of them, I promise (and this time I mean it).
