Decisive moments your your audio journey

Joining Audiogon many moons ago.  Things got real!

Yes, the first time I heard my dad's Ampex tape machine. He put on an Oscar Peterson tape and it was a wet dream. This was 1964. I was 8 years old and I had had my own Zenith Portable for 4 years. From then on all I wanted to listen to was that Ampex. This was playing through an H.H. Scott  preamp, driving a stereo 70, driving Bozak B302A loudspeakers. These sonically were the best sounding speaker in the entire line. It was perfectly balanced and cast a really good image. The Zenith got very little attention after that. I was determine to get my own system and tape machine. It took 10 years and it was a Revox A77 with Dolby. This played into a used Marantz 7C preamp, driving a used Fuzz Linear 700, driving Klipsh Heresy loudspeakers. The Turntable was a used Thorens TD 124II with an ADC Pritched  tonearm (wooden) and too many cartridges to remember. Nobody taught me about economics. Had I invested 1/2 the money I had pissed away on HiFi gear I would be very rich right now. 

About 8 years ago I bought my daughter one of those all in one record players, one that comes with little speakers that plug into it. Cheap thing, maybe $100. As I listened to her playing records I realized that it actually sounded much better than my phone, computer, and car. I said to myself, "This is good but there must be better". Thus my journey started. 

For me it was in 1999 when a dealer brought a pair of Soundvalves mono amps to my home to demo. That was my first exposure to tubes and I was gobsmacked. I had a pair of Von Schweikert VR4s at the time and I had never heard them sound so good. Fast forward to today and 30 or so tube amps have been through the system. Guess I’m a tube guy for life. 

So many...which date to the late 69-early 70 when my father bought me, I was 5 years old,  a tube amplifier that needed a LOT of restoration, and after 8-12 months was ready to be plugged into my father's Tannoy. Still bring chills when I remember  the tubes lighting up, this alone was probably among the most influential things ever happened to me. I am autistic so at that time autism was not all well understood, still isn't understood but we are making progress, it help me to connect to something, and without knowing all of the sudden this little boy found a way to connect and be more "normal". My dad recognized this and soon I was restoring radios and amplifiers in my town. My path into electronics, music, turntables, records, computers, math and physics was now set.

Second to that, when my father introduced me to Hiroyasu Kondo in 1991, that same year, I sold my car, and pretty much everything else so I could afford my first Kondo, OnGAKU which I still have, and started  generous client-owner relationship Hiroyasu Kondo. Now I have 4 of his amplifiers. 

Third might be the first TechDas TT and the darTZeel nhb-458 which was my first serious SS amp purchase.