The receiver was my intro to HiFi! What say you?

In the Summer of ’68 (how many here were then not yet born? 😊 ) I put together my first system: a Garrard SL55 with a Shure M44e cartridge, a Fisher X-100A integrated tube amp, and Acoustic Research 4ax loudspeakers. Not a bad place to start.

The following year I replaced the Garrard with an Acoustic Research XA table with a Shure M91e cartridge.

Three years later I discovered Stereophile (from an ad in the back of Audio Magazine iirc), and the race was on! In ’73 I got myself what many audiophiles were getting: Magneplanar Tympani’s bi-amped with ARC Dual 75 and Dual 51 power amps and an SP-3 pre-amp, a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 with a Decca arm and cartridge, and a Revox A77 Mk.3. I didn’t care for the Decca arm (I dislike unipivots), soon replacing it with an SME 3009 Improved. I could live with that system today. Actually, I now have Tympani’s and London (Decca) cartridges, but evolved versions of each.

@motown-l Your dorm system sounds a lot like mine.  I had KLH Model 32 loudspeakers, which were the lowest priced KLH speaker made at the time.  I paid $80/pair and that was stretching it for me.  I had a Heathkit AJ-14 FM tuner I built from kit, a used Dynaco SCA-35 integrated tube amp, and a Garrard Type A record changer with a Shure M3D cartridge.

The Dyna endured a beer spill at a party one time.  Flash, flash went the tubes!  A couple tube replacements later it worked great.  

Same here.  I had been reading electronics mags for a couple of years and really wanted to move on from the old portable record player with speakers I inherited from an older sister, and the table radio.  I was talking to my Mom about Christmas presents I wanted and told her I’d really like to have a new stereo receiver.  Mom didn’t know anything about such gear, but she went to a local department store and a salesman recommended a model.  This one — Pioneer SX-626: 

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/pioneer/sx-626.shtml
 

I received it on Christmas 1971 when I was a month shy of 17.  It was pricey — $300!   I loved it but had nothing else to attach to it or play it through.  For a while I got by listening on cheap headphones, until I gradually fleshed out the rest of the system.  The page above states 20 watts per channel, but the manual that came with it read 27 watts per channel.  Either way, I was in love with it for several years, until the sound became muddy (I did not know about having caps changed and such) and I gave it to Salvation Army in the early 80’s.   That piece got me started.  😊