1970, I was 15 years old, had a Dynaco ST-70, REK-o-CUT player with GE cartridge, an old Zenith tube pre-amp, Viking tube reel to reel, and an 8 track deck, home built base reflex Electro-voice LS-15 full range wolverine. I also had a large stack of records for 15 since every $ went to records. I got most of the equipment from my Fathers recording studio equipment no longer used or needed. I payed about $35 for each speaker. Lots of deep purple, led zep, mountain, stuff like that. I was 15. Now it's ARC, Vandersteen, SOTA. |
At 19 I purchased a 200w Carver 2000 receiver a Kenwood TT and cassette player and 2 pair of infinity speakers One pair were 3way with 12'woofers and the other were towers with a front and rear firing tweeter a front firing mid and 10'woofer and a down firing 10'woofer. Then an Awia Cdp once cds were introduced. I remember most about it is that was how I first built credit and been in debt ever since:). Still have them in storage. |
Oh my, I remember it well. It was 1977 and I was 18 years old. I had a good job right out of high school and I had saved a huge sum of money right up to Christmas. I walked into a audio/video store and purchased a Kenwood KA-7100 integrated amp, a JVC JT-V71 tuner, a Pioneer CT-F8080 cassette deck, a Technics SL-1300MK2 turntable, and Technics SB-7000 speakers. It was a great sounding system. I wish I had more money for the Kenwood KA-9100 and the Kenwood KT-8300 tuner at the time, but I went away happy. I still have the amp and tuner. I wish I had kept all of it, but the upgrade bug bit and I purchased Mac equipment later on. I sold or traded the rest. |
In 1978, my father bought me pioneer system. At least it came with saperate pre and power amp, cassette, turntable, tuner, and big speakers.
I thought it was the greatest thing ever - in my memory, I can't beat that sensation I had even with today's system for some reason - perhaps it's my age with a bit of hearing loss now, or my enthusiasm for new music back then.
I still have the amps and they still function !
I think buying all in one big system on craiglist for $100 is a good way to start on this exciting hobby - instead of getting a boombox for the price. |
1973 - catalog ordered from some place in San Luis Obispo, CA - Dual 1218 tt, Pickering cartridge, Harman Kardon (530 ?)receiver, Infinity 1001 two way loudspeakers. First set of separates which replaced a Sony bookshelf system into which I inserted a pair of KLH 2 way monitors. Now that I think of it, the sale of my KLH speakers to make room for the Infinitys was my first sale of used gear. Its been a hilly ride ever since! |
I guess my first real system was in 1977 or 78 and consisted of a Realistic STA-2000 receiver, a pair of Mach 1 speakers and a totally forgettable Rat Shack cassette player (although it was my first with Dolby). I soon added a Technics SL-1900 TT. Within a couple of years, the receiver and cassette deck were replaced with a Yamaha CA-810 & CT-810 combo and a Pioneer CTF-900. |
Looking back, I really fell in love with music during this time. Its about 1972 I am a 15 year old trumpet player/vocalist attemding USDAN Center for the Performing Arts during my summer. I begged my dad for a stereo system for the previous three years. I also wanted a car (Camaro SS) and a honda dirt bike. Those two things never happened.
The stereo system did. Thats just one of many fond memories of my dad. One of the other memories I have of my dad was seeing the look of awe on his face when I played one of his and my moms Sam Cooke albums on this system. (After a DiscWasher and "Last" preservation treatment) That was followed by Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Ray Charles among many others.
Dual 1249Q with Shure cartridge
Bose 501 Speakers
Sansui AU7700 Intergrated Amp
Sansui TU7700 Tuner
Sansui Dolby Tape Deck Auto Reverse and program play.
I wish I still had them. My Dad too.
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Pioneer SX-838 receiver, Pioneer Pl-55x turntable with a Stanton 681EEE cartridge, and JBL L-100 Speakers. All for $1219 in 1975. My dad thought I was nuts! |
cambridge 550a
cambridge 540p
Music Hall MMF7
PSB Image T55
before that i wouldnt call it a system, most just what i had come into over time. marantz 2215, technics sl1900, some bookshelfs. |
when I was 12yr my dad bought me a ELECTROPHONIC review with built in 8 track, small speakers that said air suspension and a built in Garrod turntable. It sucked. My next shortly thereafter at age 15 yrs old was a Marantz 2220B reciever with ECI speakers and a Marantz 6100 direct drive turntable. Next got a Teac A400 cassette. At 20 yrs old I got a Yamaha CA810 integrated amp and matching tuner, with Bang & Olufen TX Turntable(still have) Bose 901 speakers(stinko)then JBL L100 speakers, then JBL L112 speakers(I always liked them)then Nackimichi B100 cassette, then BX300 cassette,then Klipsch LaScalla speakers(like them,poor bass but too darn big)then McIntosh reciever then AR turntable, then Denon turntable, then B&K Pro101 Preamp,then Nackimichi reciever, then B& K Pro10MC preamp then B&K 202 plus ap, then Thiel CS 1 then Thiel CS 1.2 then Thiel CS 2 then Thiel CS 2.2 then Thiel CS 2.3 I want Thiel CS3.7 now I have McIntosh MC206 amp and McIntosh MX118 preamp and Meridian 508 CD. I left out alot of Sony CD players that gave out |
1974, 14 yrs old - am/fm car stereo with homemade power supply, home made speakers. Added a ratshack 4w amp with phono in and Gerard TT w/Pickering ceramic cartridge. Ouch. Upgraded the amp to a Fisher 12w intergrated and the TT to a Techniques SL3300 and built bigger speakers. Dumped the car radio for a Scott tuner-I have fond memories of that system. |
Circa 1968, Sanui 800a reciever, I believe it was 15 or 20 watts, University Sound Speakers and a entry level Dual Turntable with Shure Cartridge. When I came back from overseas in 1971 I had a Sansui 5000 Reciever, AR3 Speakers (wish I still had them), Teac Reel to Reel Deck and Dual 1225 Turntable with a Shure Cartridge. Over the years I have owned Technics TT, Phase Linear, EPI (Epicure), DB Systems, Magnapan, Kenwood, Denon, Mac 1900 Receiver, Mac 2105 Amp - C 26 Pre Amp, Spectral, Bryston, Theil CS3.6 speakers, Linn LP 12, Itok Arm, Madrigal Carnegie I, Dynavector, NAD, Roksan and Paradigm speakers and too many others, including expensive cables, wires & tweeks to remember. It has been a long & wonderful journey. I am thankful I can still hear. I know it was about first systems but I got too reminiscent to stop. |
1985 Living in Japan at the time with a px. I still use the tuner, and my church uses the amp for the cryroom.
kenwood m1 amp
kenwood c2 pre
infinity rs3b speakers
onkyo t4017 tuner
onky0 eq35 eq
teac cd player
techniques phono |
Year 1966. 19 years old -very limited income.
An old JBL solid state integrated amp for $20 from a friend. Another friend's former speakers Acoustic Research AR-5 for $15 and a third friend let go an AR-XA turntable no cartridge fitted for $5. Got a new Shure M91 phono cartridge ($23) some lamp zip wire ($2.00)as speaker cable and no recordings! A total of $65 for my first stereo set (more money than my monthly salary income then).
My first LP -Beethoven's Violin Concerto - Ruggiero Ricci violinist let me discover my AR speakers had blown tweeters and failing mid-hi level knobs and also that my JBL electronics had scratchy tone / volume controls!!!
So guess had to start up as a tweaker as well as an audiophile.
After cleaning up my JBL's volume / tone pots and replacing my AR's hi-range drivers with new original ones plus cleaning up mid-hi pots I added AR's recommended fuse setup - and was finally able to enjoy the magic of good music at home!!!
Was quite happy for some time. Till another friend listened to my stereo rig and offered me to buy it all. Sold it for $250.
Then started my search for more used equipment. But that's another story. |
My brothers pioneer all in one receiver/tape/phono and loads of 70's rock lp's. The benefit of being the baby brother in the 70'/ealy 80's. |
It was 1979, I managed a Radio Shack store in Carmichael, CA (#3934, I still remember)
I was 20 years old.
I had the SA-2001 integrated amp with the TM-1001 tuner, Mach One speakers, the Lab 400 turntabler and the TR-3000 reel to reel, even the bid equalizer. Throw in the seperate lighted VU meters in a custom redwood rack made from 2"x10" planks.....All Realistic. I still have it in storage...
I know it's not great, but I wouldn't take $25,000 for it. (not that any sane man would offer it)
I was always jealous of the guys (older of course) who had the "cool" name brand stuff (Sansui, Pioneer, Marantz, etc.) Now it's all available on Ebay for about free. I'm really glad I saved it all these years, it hasn't been easy moving it. |
My first system (not counting the Sears system) was purchased used as a system. It included a Pro-Linear turntable with an Empire cartridge, Technics SU-7700 amp, and Optimus 5 speakers. |
It was 1973 I was 14, pioneer amp pioneer turntable radio shack speakers |
Kenwood receiver, small Advent speakers, and a Fisher turntable back in 1972.--Mrmitch |
My first system was a Panasonic Panapet Ball Radio. I remember buying it for $10 back in 1971 with money from mowing lawns. I then expanded the system with a Portable Panasonic Tape Recorder that my Uncle bought for me for $20 at the army PX in 1972. I recorded songs off the air though the internal mic. |
AR Receiver, AR XA Turntable w/Shure V15 Type II cartridge,
Dynaco A25 speakers, Superex ProB-V headphones.
Lamp cord for speakers, captive power cords and captive IC on the turntable. |
Wind-up WW II olive drab suitcase 78 player. Built a Dynaco SCA-35 in 1964, to go with new AR speakers, and a turntable cobbled together from a Motorola mono system of my parent's. Not loud, but quite a bit better than the 78. Wish I still had all of them. |
In 1979 I sold all my silver coin collection, and with birthday and X-mas money i had around $500. Wanted a Pioneer system which included a PL-200 table and F-500 cassette deck. Wanted 50w/ch so a Toshiba SA-750 was found at clearence price. With not enough left for Pioneer speakers I purchase 12 inch 3 way Omega speakers. The speakers played loud but were junk they lasted less then 2 years. Replaced them with small Advents with money from my first job(parents were not as generous 30 years ago)lol. |
Mine was a Heathkit AR-1500 receiver (built it myself) and Advent large loudspeakers. I also had a Dual turntable with Shure cartridge but I can't remember the model numbers. I loved it but lost it all upon my divorce. |
kenwood ka 5500 amp, sanyo turntable,panasonics top loading cassette deck,and kenwood speaker k555
thses were in 1978. |
1989, I was 14. Kenwood cdp, techniques turntable, Pioneer receiver, Advent BabyII speakers. And like the OP, I felt like the biggest badass on the block. |
In 1982, I was 13, I got a Technics SA-222 receiver (30wpc), a Denon DP-31L turntable with a Micro-Acoustics cartridge, a Sony cassette deck and some "AES - Audio Electronics Systems 3-way speakers. Pretty sweet sound for a 13 year old kid. And by "sweet" I mean that it could play unbelievably loud!
The Sony conked out after a few years and I replaced it with a Denon 3-head cassette deck. I gave away the speakers years ago. I recently pulled the rest of the components out of the attic and discovered they still worked perfectly, so I sold them for a few bucks on eBay, which was more trouble than it was worth. Should have donated it to Goodwill. |
Curtis Mathis HiFi around 1960 |
First system was a piece of crap, but i loved it anyway.
Radio Shack receiver, crappy speakers, and a turntable with a chipped needle.
I've since built my own speakers, upgraded to decent components over the past 30 years. |
I can't remember. It was good. |
In 1975 I turned 16, other kids bought their first car, I bought a Phase Linear 4000 preamp, 400 amp, Bose 901 Series II Speakers, Thorens TD-124 turntable with (I think) a Grado cartridge.
By 1977 I graduated High School was selling gear for a local high end shop and had moved up to Quad ESL-57 electrostats, Audio Research SP3A preamp + D76A amp, Panasonic SP10 turntable with Rabco SL-8E arm and Denon DL-103S Moving Coil Cartridge.
Today I have kids, my system is mainly for Home Theater, all Martin Logan's (Prodigy R/L, Theater CTR, Request SIDE, Aerius REAR, Descents) with Lexicon MC-12 preamp, Bryston amps, and a modified Oppo bdp-95 blue ray player. For fun I just built two Danley Sound Labs DTS-10 tapped horn subwoofers driven by a QSC RMX 4050HD on a dedicated 20 amp circuit. (I've been lurking on audiogon to pick up a used turntable and get back to vinyl)
However to this day I can still remember the thrill of sitting in front of my Quads, mesmerized by the most incredible detail, ambience and soundstage I'd ever heard. It hooked me for a lifetime of audio enjoyment. |
Back in 1996 I bought a JVC digital front (CD player don't remember the model) but it was about 150 $; JVC receiver RX 316 R (about 250 $). Before almost immediately switching to Magnat Transpuls 3000 3-way speakers that I bought on sale in Vienna, Austria for only 100 $ (MSRP of 600 $), I used an old ReVox monitor speakers (don't remember the number) 25 Watts only. |
In 2004 I put together my first sound system: a Marantz SR4200 with Paradigm Monitor 5 v3's, Titans for surrounds, a CC350, and a PS1000 sub, and a Panasonic DV-578. The only changes I ended up making in 8 years was adding a PS3 for blu rays more than games, replacing the Marantz with an Onkyo TX-SR805, and replacing the DV-578 with a Panasonic DMP-BDT210. It was a reliable mancave HT setup, but too ugly to have in the living room. |
GE 8 track. It actually had ok sound for what it is. I enjoyed Beethoven symphonies and the sound of music when I was a teenager...
Brings me back memories of grateful parents who have given me all my toys... then they bought me a complete Pioneer system which sounded much better - I thought it was sonic heaven then...
Strange how much I enjoyed that system, even more than I am doing now with my 60k+ system... Is it my age, or do we simply get used to higher quality, and it stops being amazing after awhile? |
Liquid-Smooth, I was just reading your last paragraph and thinking back how much I enjoyed my first system. I seem to remember enjoying it as much, if not more than my current systems. I guess it may seem that way because it was a starter system and the real attention grabber, whereas now I'm more accustomed to having great sound as the norm. Great memories though! |
What is the solution then? Is there a way to recapture that excitement again or is it gone for good? Please enlighten me... |
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AR-XA turntable
Dynaco SCA-35 integrated amp
AR 4x speakers |
Sansui QR500 four channel receiver, Lafayette four channel 8-track deck, Dual 1229 turntable, four Sylvania bookshelf speakers, Lafayette headphones.
After having an 8-track player at home and In the car, it seemed like I was In the big time. I just KNEW quadraphonic was here to stay! |
Sansui speakers,recviever and AR turntable brought it back from Nam,Dude!! |
My first system which I bought from a hifi store on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood the first week after enrolling in college consisted of an Onkyo TX-1500 mkii receiver (which I still have and other than a missing power button, works great!) that put out a whopping 17 watts per channel, a pair of Bose 301 speakers (how I envied the Navy ROTC guys who bought their Bose 901's in Japan at great discounts), an Akai tape deck, a Technics SL-Q2 turntable with an Audio Technica MM cartridge (couldn't afford a Shure V-15 Type IV back then), out of the box RCA interconnects and "honking big" (at that time LOL) Monster Cable speaker wires. I used this system up until 2005 when I finally focused my energies on upgrading to my present system. I'd ship that college system back and forth between Hawaii and Southern California and fortunately, never had any issues with the US Postal Service (I must have been born under a lucky star). Good times! |
Nine years later, this thread is still going, because none of us who loves music forgets that first system...and the joys of getting it home and taking it out of its boxes. I have two "first" systems.....as a high school freshman in 1971, bought a super-cheapo from a company called "Soundesign:" it may have pumped out two channels of sound, but even to my very untrained teenage ears, it was lacking. (After I went to school, my brother and sister played it to death.) Fast forward to 1980, a fresh college graduate in Washington, DC... bought my first system from a stereo dealer long-gone: Myer-Emco. My receiver was a Toshiba SA-725; my speakers were a pair of Avid 102A's; my turntable, which lasted me for years, was a Yamaha YPB2....which came with a Signet TK3C cartridge. I'll never forget calling a cab, loading in the boxes, and taking it back to my DC apartment. When I finally got it all set up, I put on Rickie Lee Jones and thought I'd never heard anything sound so good. The whole thing cost me $750 dollars in 1980.
In the 33 years since, I've been through several changes of systems.....but still have that Rickie Lee Jones (now CD); it's my ritual.....it's the first album I put on whenever I have a major system upgrade. It's my tradition.
Jeff |
1977..Large pair of walnut Advents..Sansui AU-7900 intergrated..75 watts into 8ohms..Dual 701 turntable with Shure V15 cartridge.. |
NAD 7020 with ESS speakers (2 way w/Heil transformer) Rotel turntable and Tandberg cassette deck...survived multiple moves and med school |
Heathkit AR1500 that I built, original large Advent speakers, Dual turntable but I can't remember the model or the cartridge (probably a Shure). I lost it all when I got divorced, sad to say. |
My first system that consisted of separate components would be Phase Linear Series II amp & preamp driving Bose 901 speakers w/Technics SL1200 tt. Around 79-80.
First system was a Sansui G-9000 Receiver driving the same 901's along with that Technics tt. Around 1978? |
Fun thread. My first "real" component system ~1970:
Minerva receiver - couldn't afford the big names
AR turntable with Signet cartridge - still have
Soundesign 8 track player/recorder - yeah baby
Utah speakers - honking big mothers with horn tweeters |
Coming from Denmark my first system was truly a designer show piece consisting of Bang & Olufsen Beomaster 1200 receiver with a Beogram 1200 turntable. http://arcamadeus.simplesite.com/305336804
These components have been on permanent display at the Museum for Modern Art in New York for over 40 years. |
There was a Sony outlet that sold refurbished equipment in Kenosha, WS-about an hour away from my parent's house. In high school my first component was Sony's first Dolby Pro-Logic receiver. I remember it required a separate amp to drive the center channel which was kind of ridiculous and therefore never used for surround. That drove my dad's Sony speakers from the 70's for a few months until, with the help of my dad, I did a 12 month free financing deal on a pair of giant Cerwin Vega speakers with 15" woofers and a heavy pair of Monster Speaker cables. All this time I was using a Sony D-35 Discman (second only to their flagship D- 555). Within the next year or so I bought a Sony ES single cassette deck and the very first 100 disc changer Sony made which was much more well made than subsequent "mega changers". With the exception of the receiver all the equipment is still in working order and cosmetically almost flawless. My brother-in-law re-foamed the speakers and is using them for his "party house" and the rest sits in retirement in my basement much to my wife's discontent. I got years of service from this equipment which was mixed and matched in HT systems and secondary rigs as I built up my 2 channel main rig. |
During the time that a graduate course credit was $35 at Penn State, I walked into Watson Equipment Sales (WES) in State College, PA, and was soon drooling over an array of speakers and integrated amps. I took home to my apartment a Pioneer SX-626 receiver and a pair of Altec 887a's, to be matched with a used AR XA turntable. It was that first term that my roommate introduced me to post-Peter Green, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac. When my apartment was ransacked over Christmas break I lost the turntable, but had the wisdom to move the receiver and speakers to a friend's for safe keeping. |
