How long ago did you catch the bug?

Age 4, 1965.. big truck arrived unloaded Bozak, MX-110Z, MC240, Dual 1019 w a Shure and 40’ of brown lamp cord… Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra… hooked…. My parents had no carpet or couch but did they have tunes…

I still have the MC gear….listening to the 240 as i write this…..many miles, many years….more smiles…

1975. That was a long time ago now.

I think I had what is probably a common experience: I had been going along using commonplace Sears Roebuck level gear, thinking of hi-fi nuts as weirdos as suggested by Mad Magazine, until I listened to music at the house of a friend who had a decent sound system, which opened up my ears to how much better music can sound.

I remember going to those old chain stereo stores and they'd have all the chain stereo store brands with all the switches and the equalizers and the meters, and there'd be a handful of the higher end items that would be a black box and one dial, or something like that. 

my first exposure to high end was in a port angeles WA. stereo shop back in may of 1979, i was listening to an ordinary neil diamond LP being played through equipment whose name escapes me now, but it was high end stuff judging by the lack of price tags ["if you have to ask, you can't afford it"]. but the thing i noticed was the utter background silence and clean undistorted, detailed and full-bodied musical sound of the the LP compared to anything i'd heard up to that point [inner groove tracing distortion, groove roar, crackle and hiss]. it sounded to me just like a master tape but i knew it was not. i recall seeing a burwen declicker and noise reducer in the equipment stack. that scene planted in my mind the thought that some day i had to also have something similar. it took me 10 years to catch up with that.