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

I started with a cheap, portable turntable/speaker unit, then Sansui 8080, Empire, ESS AMT1a

I got my first stereo from the BX in England RAF base.  I ordered on ' layaway ' from AAFEES a Crown IC150. DC150 and an EQ2 with a pair of Norman Labs with a Thorens TD126.  Rocked the barracks 😆

Sony V-Fet 125W can't remember the model.  I blew it up twice but it sounded good.  I had a Leach DIY Class A that was really good after that.

Nikko STA-5010

Smaller Advents

Gerrard something from 1973

Thought I was in heaven 

Crazy Eddie 

Marantz 2270 bought at Rabson's on 57th Street, NYC for $389 in 1976 along with a pair of Koss Pro4AA phones ($40). Speakers came later!

Speakers came several months later: a store-demo pair of Infinity Monitor 1A's with Walsh tweeters for $450 (list price $900). Then an Empire 698 TT/MicroAcoustics 2002E cartridge from Stereo Discounters in Maryland for approximately $400. All this by the Spring of 1977!

1970: Scott receiver, Gerrard turn table, AR4 speakers.

Unfortunately I no longer remember the model number of Scott receiver or Gerrard turn table.

testing

Carver MXR 130 with a JVC tape deck, JVC Linear Tracking Turntable, Nakamichi CD, ADC EQ and Cerwin Vega Speakers. Beast of a college system.

Family system was a Zenith mini console. It was a large rectangular box. The doors were the speakers which opened out and hung on the unit. The TT was on a spring which you pushed so that it either receded into the unit or "dropped down". The top facing glass had the buttons for functions. I was about 10 or 11 got my brother's second hand Kay guitar and worked out chords to CCR, Hendrix (when my parents were out as he was "forbidden fruit" I borrowed from my brother, BB King, Cream, whatever. Got a paper route and first bought a used Epiphone Wilshire guitar and amp then in JR high school a Scott SS amp, BIC TT and I think BIC speakers, not sure it was over 50 year ago. Got a job in a record store and helped out at an audio store where we supplied the classical records. The owner liked me and sold the record store owners a used McIntosh MA5100 to give me for my HS graduation. Used graduation money to buy demo JBL monitors. Had it thru college until I went to graduate school out of state and it all "disappeared" from the house due to various of my 4 brothers needing a stereo or money.

@jasonbourne71    Down with you on 2270's....

....had everything I desired at the time...*S*  And continued to do so for quite awhile....

And considering the prices of reconditioned and/or mint ones.....would have made for a nice investment...*L*

@bigwave1 I bought a pair of Bose 401's from Crazy Eddie.

Like @motown-l , I started audiophilia with a Pioneer SX-525 and an idler. In my case a Dual 1214 with a Stanton cart of some sort. This was in 1973. Speakers were Marantz 4G, which I doubled and stacked a year later. Then Koss headphones. I loved that system for more than a decade—before early stages of nervosa set in!

Crazy Eddie, a great bait and switcher. 

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.  😊