When did you get hooked?

I cannot remember a time when music was NOT a big part of my life. I started buying 45’s when I was about 8 yrs old. It was only natural that I would try to find the best purveyor of the music. But I am still unsure that I am an audiophile. I don’t feel the need to change out equipment every year. I totally dislike most all the audiophile approved music, IE female vocals.

I always loved music too, but I never really thought about "the moment" until OP asked this question. Thinking about it now though, I believe that it was one Saturday many years ago when my late older brother Paul bought a Panasonic reel to reel at Two Guys. It came with a detachable speakers and a demo tape, and one of the songs on the tape was Time of the Season by The Zombies. It sounded so ethereal and beautiful, and I guess I was hooked from that time on.

Mono system with K-Horn/Garrard TT around 1960.

The amp was a Heathkit W5M (confirmed some 35 years later when a friend found one @ a local thrift).

Don't recall the preamp/R2R deck brands.

A couple years later the system (neighbor across the street) became stereo with 2 K-Horns, Marantz tube gear plus an additional TT (Thorens or Garrard) and a 2nd R2R.

I know the 2nd stereo amp was an 8 or 8B, but I vividly recall it having a white faced meter  (all I've seen in later years have dark faced meters).

Faulty memory or did they also come with a white faced meter?

DeKay

Never an audiophiliac but always a musicphiliac. But in 1975 while in High school went to a very small party at a house a friend was watching, Garrard TT, Mac amp & Klipsch rosewoods, with a little mind altering substance. Pink Floyd never sounded so good before. It was then I knew I had to upgrade my Montgomery Wards all in one with the quad 8-track.

Back in '70 or '71, I was visiting a friend who had a Harman Kardon receiver and Utah speakers and I couldn't believe how much better it sounded than my GE 'suitcase' stereo with the fold-down turntable.

He told me about an old used Fisher tube amp (x-101-ST) that he had seen at a repair shop being sold for $60. That was big bucks for me at the time but I scraped the money together and bought it (I still have it). I also bought his dad's Garrard Type A.

Somewhere, I found a pair of 12" coaxial EV Wolverine speakers without cabinets and temporarily mounted them in cardboard boxes. I later scraped up the money for some birch veneer plywood and built cabinets for them from the EV plans.

In the mid 1950s a neighbor had a JBL C34 rear-loaded corner horn, a custom amp with separate power supply he had designed, and a Garrard RC 80 with GE variable reluctance cartridge.  The sound was a revelation to me, and I was hooked.  I added an RCA jack to my Fender guitar amp for an RCA changer -- I think I was a college freshman, but maybe a high school senior.

db