Around 1965, Dad had a Bogan tube mono amp, a 45 player, and a really large (3X3X5 feet) coaxial speaker enclosure he made. Pretty much state of the art in the early sixties. It didn’t have a speaker grill at first so the cat would just walk in the large open port and sleep inside. If you cranked up the amp the cat would come shooting out at full speed. He also had a box set of 45s from the show "Guys and Dolls". We later used them as Frisbees. Darn kids.
How long ago did you catch the bug?
My first inkling was about 1972 when a friend mentioned such things as Dual, Thorens, AR, Scott, etc. By '74-'75 I knew about all the Japanese manufacturers (courtesy of a military PX catalog) and about McIntosh. By '76 was using a hand me down all in one Panasonic compact system. The compact system did not last long and very shortly after, '77, came a "proper" 1970's system with such names as Pioneer, Kenwood, Shure, AR, Teac.