Very humble beginnings............and yours?

Defied my preacher father when I was 14 & took a summer job,passing on beating on doors hawking bibles,then icing on the cake was spending my earnings my first Radio Shack receiver & 2 way bookshelf speakers...Blasting out Rush,Bad Co.,Led Zepp & ALL the 60's/early 70's bands was the straw since Satan was a musician & all music was evil so I was gone in another 6 months at 15...
 Joining the Army at 17 afforded me the chance to see ALL the great bands as I traveled the globe as an Engineer Diver,well over 1000 live concerts incl.Led Zepp,The Who,The Stones,Pink Floyd & on & on & on...
 Now 60 & still a rocker but my taste is HUGELY varied now,from intimate Chamber & full symphonic to surfer rock to reggae to Hawaiian Island to ambient new age & many many others...

My what a small world. I was a little younger, lived with my older brother.
I was almost 14, I had a 36 hour a week job. School, 4 and half hours a day. That until, I was 17, got married, to a gal I thought was gonna' have MY baby. Turned out not to be. Divorced her, met my wife at 19, and been with the same person all this time.. 1000 years or so.

LONG line of Baptist, preachers, teachers, and "the other side", of the family, in Ireland, go figure, "Fader McMC", and St McStereo, oh there are a few, O'Tools, Bartons, Chief "something or other", from the northern tribes, 10% American Jew, 15% American African, 25% American native, and 40% American Irish.  100% American, Blue eyed DEMON. Get thee behind me, ye masters of SIN, and corruption..
That, THAT BEAT, will corrupt you...Make you do things, you wouldn't do,
OH YEA, I've heard it.  :-)

All those years, worked as a mechanic, and the last 25 or so hydraulics, electrical, and just big stuff.. Always a music guy, though, Gospel to Bali, Willie Nelson, to Pavarotti. Classical, to Caribbean. I like it all.

I like retirement best of all, best job I ever had, on the worst day is still better than the last day at the last job, I had. IT SUCKED.

I can deal with Tiny Tim, yup Tiny Tim, BUT

No Yoko Ono, sorry gotta draw the line somewhere!!

Regards 

Stereo showed up
in 1965 when I was 4. I still have the crucial McIntosh bits. Both parents could play instruments so grew up immersed in music and other esoterica.
i worked at a local
high end stereo shop in HS and managed a fantastic high end shop thru some of University.
my first
rig was Philco/Ford tube am/FM w slide out record player.... late night stealth listening to Detroit and Cleveburg FM

My older brother got a Panasonic reel to reel and a receiver and speakers from EJ Korvette around 1966. He had his own room, I used to go in to listen and I was hooked. I listened to my parents cheap Montgomery Ward console when they went out because rock was forbidden in the house. At that time, it was Cream, Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and some folkies.
Left home at 18 and sold the new car that Dad had given me to buy a Mac 2105 amp and a pair of new Klipschorns. Used my roomate's Fisher 500 as a preamp/tuner, and I was in heaven.
That is how it all began. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm still loving it.  

Wow, EJ Korvette's!!  Man, I remember them from the store in Rockville, MD.  The story I heard was that they were founded by Eleven Jewish Korean Veterans, hence the name.  Is there any truth to that?

Anyway, I was extremely fortunate in that my dad bought an Ampex reel to reel deck waaaay back in the early 60s when we lived in Kensington, MD.  Since he was an electrical engineer, I persuaded him to buy a Heathkit receiver and we spent several weeks putting that rascal together.  Boy, oh boy, that was some experience!.

We graduated from that to a Marantz top of the line *quad* receiver, I forget the model, 4 Jensen 6 speakers, and a Garrard Zero-100 turntable with a Shure SME cartridge.  That was a pretty darn good system for 1967 or so.  And my systems have gotten progressively better as the years have flown by!

I am still digging the hell out of audio - AND video. I'm rocking Gallo Reference 3.1s all around in a 5.2 configuration with an Integra DHC-80.3 processor, Oppo 105 universal shiny disc player and a coupla Crown digital amps (front speakers, bi-amped) along with an Acurus 3 channel amp to drive the Center and Surrounds.  Oh yeah, snagged a very nice LG 60" 4K HDTV for the video side of things.

The Integra with Audyssey MultiEQ XT32 sounds *marvelous* with the Gallos and I doubt I'll be changing much of anything for quite a while.  I now spend most of my (retired) daze searching for the very best quality source material and I'm in AV Heaven, brother!!  Can I get an amen??!!
=RW=

Radio Shack used to sell these kits in the clear/red box and you would breadboard whatever.  Started with a crystal radio.  Moved on to a two transistor FM radio! Then I had to try.......................

Similar to Corelli, my very first ‘music box’ of any kind, that I could call my own, was a crystal radio set my father bought me when I was pretty young. Remember him teaching me about it, stringing the line antenna to a tree in the front yard, and playing with that thing for hours, especially at night, amazed I was able to pick up stations with it.

That was my start.