Is your now then?

Started back in 63’. My friend walked around with a transistor radio tucked in his waist band. Listening to Summertime, Summer in the City, Bill Haley…
 Then I saw a pair of MBL 111es. Then I saw a pair of VAC 170iqs, then I saw a Transrotor…
I said, f#*¥! I’m in. 

in 1962 I walked into a hi fi store in Berkeley and heard a pair of KLH 9's driven by a transformerless amp.....truly a game changing experience. Several months later, heard a pair of Quad 57 ESLs, bought a pair and listened to them for many years with true pleasure. They've gone away and now using a pair of Harbeth 40.1's which sound to me like a giant pair of Quads

Like many of the audio veterans here I also began my love of quality sound in the sixties when I first heard my friends fathers Fisher amp and Garrard table and Jensen speakers and the Hammond B3 of the Vanilla fudge. My older brother help set me up with a tube amp from a console stereo, a Garrard table and a pair of AR2ax speakers. After recovering from a severe case of Guillain Barre Syndrome in '73 I treated myself to a Marantz 2270 and an ARxb table and later Cornwalls.I now stream from a Node 2 with an RME dac and some Mcintosh power. Now that our family is grown and colleges and weddings are done and paid for, its time to up the ante and upgrade my speakers to some Wilsons, Legacys or Focals . Music is my main source for relaxation and after nearly sixty years, my love of music and the journey to reproduce music at the highest level is on a never ending road. I could never understand how someone could live a full life without a hi end stereo in their home. 

  Growing up in Wyoming, there was little influence for better audio, but strangely there were live performances by the most unexpected performers in my little town. I got to hear Phyllis Diller, The Utah Symphony, Virgil Fox and others. It was Virgil Fox that got me to thinking when he said on stage, "Let me introduce you to the electronic organ that travels with me. It takes a full 18 wheeler to get it from place to place, and hours upon hours to set up. At best it is a good imitation of a great sound,,, the pipe organ." I immediately knew what he meant. I also understand after a few disappointments from the local music store owner, that my very hard earned money was better spent first by researching various kits for speakers and amplifiers, and then building them myself. Since I was in high school woodshop, I was able to build a clone of the Klipsch K horn. I will never forget that. It has continued in part that way ever since. You may think that I enjoy making my own gear, and I do, except when it fails or does not live up to expectations. I find this to be due to many of the kit designers either being at explanation of instruction in building, or just assuming that you know a 'reasonable amount' of electrical knowledge. What is reasonable know to a genius? "I supplied all the mathematical theories/formulas if there was a question."