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How did you get started in this hobby

As a college kid, my roommate had KLH speakers, the Beatles Sgt. Peppers came out and homegrown Flemington flash came on the scene. My eyes were opened along with my ears. I visited a local audio store Audiolab and another not too far away Soundex. The effect on my listening, I was stunned by what I was hearing and how the management just let me listen to all the gear knowing I was just window shopping. I'll never forget Soundex( out by Willow Grove Pa)  letting me listen to all their rooms at different price points and more than a few occasions.One room had $30,000 each in electronics and $100,000 speakers. Well, I could not afford even the entry-level stuff but again my horizon was broadened. So off I went to NYCity with my roommate in tow. I ran into an audio store while he waited in the car and asked the sales guy what I could buy with the meager dollars I had. I picked up a pair of AR speakers, and a Dual Turntable, my roommate had an old HH Scott that was in his father's food store that did not work. I got it fixed for free by the teacher of the electronics class in my High school where  I would occasionally substitute teach ( babysit) to get beer money for college Thursday night beer sessions at the Extension bar.

Much later a fellow employee who was an audiophile got me connected with his buddy an audio salesman who sold me his Snell c2 mk.2 speakers and another of his friends who was looking to sell his Adcom GFP 400 pre amp/tuner and GFA 555 amp along with thick monster cable. Adcom was just starting up around 1980 and was thirty minutes away in New Brunswick NJ. For a box of donuts, they went over my gear and made some changes to the amp and preamp. I remember their CD player had a tendency to jump if vibrated that was fixed as well all while I waited for  just for a box of doughnuts.  Woo that was my system for almost 40 years.  I wanted something different, I found out about Audiogon and bought within a week a Technics SU G 700  and Canton speakers about two years ago at tremendous savings from local audiophiles one in bucks county near New Hope Pa., and another in Freehold NJ. That's my story. from start to finish.

Based on what I've seen here I am not an audiophile but someone just interested in listening to good music with good gear at good savings and who is intrigued by the character ( good and bad) I see on here and the stellar systems they have.

scott22

Showing 2 responses by clearthinker

clearthinker's avatar
clearthinker
1,582 posts
 

@curiousjim 

Thanks Jim.

My father's experiences map other people's grandfathers'. It is mind-boggling to think he was a teenager 100 years ago.  The changes he saw were mind-boggling.  He kept up with it into his 80s.  He left two diaries of his schooldays as a senior in the late 1920s which I treasure.

By good fortune he missed fighting in the two wars in Europe.  He was too young for WW1 and too old for WW2.

clearthinker's avatar
clearthinker
1,582 posts
 

My Dad.

He had 'listened in' when at boarding school during the 1920s at the dawn of radio before there were any commercial or entertainment stations.  Goodness, that's 100 years ago.  He built crystal radios from components or kits and as soon as something better came out he sold his to a schoolmate and bought the improved model.  He frequented Lisle Street in London's West End where all the radio shops were then, before the glory days of Tottenham Court Road in the 60s and 70s..  It's part of Chinatown today.

After the war he bought surplus shortwave radios that had been in warplanes.  Even into the 1970s he used one as his main radio to listen to the BBC.

In the 1950s he set aside his large gramophone cabinet with a Garrard autochanger inside and started buying audio separates.  By the early 1960s I was using these to listen to my Beatles records and so on.  When I was 14 I bought my first system, a Garrard HF and Rogers integrated amp and tuner.  He lent me two of his old speakers from his mono years, a Goodmans and a Wharfedale - yes, they didn't match.  I have spent the next 60 years moving onwards and upwards.

My dad passed in 2012, at the age of 102.  Because of failing hearing he had stopped using his hi-fi about 7 years earlier.  That system was mostly my hand me downs.  What goes around comes around.

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