What were your humble beginnings on the path to high end audio?


Recently there has been a discussion as to the “price point where mid fi tops out and hi end systems begin”. I’d be willing to bet that there are not many folks who started out in this field of interest spending $100K, $50K or even $10K. Going back to your very beginnings, what was your first serious audio system?

I’ll jump in the wayback machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman and give you a look at my beginnings.

My journey began at around age 13. I started out with a Lafayette KT-630, stereo tube amp that I built from a kit in my 9th grade, “electronics shop” class. The speakers were built at home from plans in the 1968, July issue of Mechanix Illustrated. I upgraded the cabinet construction from plywood, to solid mahogany. The twin woofers in each cabinet were also upgraded to 5” from the specified 4” units and the tweeters were also upgraded from the specified 2-3/4” units to the deluxe 3” units. The inductors in the 6db per octave passive crossovers were hand wound and the caps, terminal strips, L-pads, magnet wire and grill cloth were from Lafayette Radio Electronics as were the woofers and tweeters. The turntable was a purchased Garrard SL72B with a Shure M91E magnetic cartridge.

Check out the amp specifications on page 42 of the Lafayette 1968 summer catalog #648.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Allied-Catalogs/Lafayette-1968-Summer.pdf

The raw speakers are shown on page 55 of the Lafayette 1971 catalog #710. Woofers, 99-F-01554, figure D. Tweeters were at the bottom of page 55, 99-F-00499. The Garrard SL72B is on page 69 of the same catalog.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Consumer/Lafayette-1971.pdf

I still have the speaker systems and the amp and they all still work! Alas the SL72B is long since gone. I mowed a lot of grass and shoveled a lot of snow in the neighborhood to buy all that high end gear at age 13! :-D By todays standards, not very impressive, but to a 13 year old in 1968, it was awesome!

So to reiterate, what was your first serious audio system?

P.S. - If you are interested, check out some select old Lafayette, Allied Radio, Heathkit, Radio Shack, Olson and other old catalogs from what I think of as the “good old days” of electronics and my youth.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Electronics_Catalogs.htm

vintage_heath

Showing 1 response by deecee

Ha! I started with dumpster diving into a Lafayette Audio junk bin and buying a $5 mono tube amp (that's right just ONE) and buying a run of the mill 12" woofer that I hooked up to a portable Sony TC-60 cassette player.

Later I "upgraded" to adding a cheap tweeter (out of the same bin) and soldering a cap as a "crossover."

If I recall this was circa high school freshman. Later I had on a long term load a Realistic 2W per channel receiver.

At this stage I received a junked speaker and was proud of my actual  mismatched speaker for real stereo.

My brother (out of pity) bought me my 1st pair of real speakers for Christmas, a set of the smallest Advents (I forgot the model name). 

Later, I managed to scrape up money to later buy his Kenwood Integrated and soon bought my 1st table, a Dual 1218 (1219?).

I traded in the itty bitty Advents for Infinity Qa speakers and bought a NAD tuner (4155?) which I still have today, unused but still working.

I later bought the Nakamichi 410/420 preamp and power amp and soon upgraded to a Technics SL-1300 Mk.II.

After some shifts back and forth with various pieces I got a pair of VMPS Towers which to this day was unmatched in bass response of any system I ever owned.

I also ended up buying from a starving grad student Aragon 4004 Mk. II amp (still in operation) and 18K preamp.

The preamp eventually was replaced by an Audio Alchemy DLC with external power supply.

It goes on & on until my current system:

VPI Scout 2/JMW-9/Benz Micro Wood SL/Graham Slee 3/Sony DVP-S7000/Schiit Bifrost Uber/Sonic Euphoria PLC/Aragon 4004 Mk II/Aerial Acoustics Model 7