What stereo equipment do respected musicians listen to?


With all the debate on this piece of equipment is better than that, it got me to thinking… What setup do well respected musicians have, e.g. amps, speakers, etc.  What does Wynton Marsalis listen to, for example?  Just curious and thought it might be a fun topic. 

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Having found a virtual tour of the Louis Armstrong house, I was able to get a better look at his equipment.  The preamp appears to be a Marantz 7T and the tuner is probably whatever was offered at the time as a mate to the preamp.  One of Tandbergs was a player only.  He died in 1971, so solid state equipment of any quality was only around for a few years.  He appeared to have a automatic changer to play LP's, what kind is a mystery to me.

Well... back in the 70's and 80's when I sold Audio in retail, musicians notoriously had the Best taste in Music and the Worst taste in equipment. Rather disappointing...

Joanna Newsom? Really?  I tried to listen to her a few times and had to tag out about 45 seconds in each time.  I've come to automatically discount the opinions of any music reviewer that gushes all over her stuff.

I sold HiFi in the Boston area all my career, and members of the local orchestras and chamber groups were customers.  As a group they didn't buy really high priced gear, but listened for tonal naturalness.  I sold them KEF, Mirage, a/d/s/, and Snell speakers in those days.  These people have the ultimate playback systems without paying a dime...the ability to read the sheet music and "hear" the score in their minds!  I also sold to some famous rock bands, like members of J. Geils...they had more dough, but I wasn't in a real high end shop, so they'd buy stacks of Nakamichi separates and KEF Reference or big a/d/s/ monitors.