Dad gave me a Sony cassette recorder, a TC-110B, when I was about 8 years old. I started buying KISS cassettes starting with Destroyer. I also remember 97.9FM (98 Rock) playing back in entirety all 4 of the KISS solo albums one night. I took my parent's Sony radio and used the TC-110B to record live, all 4 albums that night, while trying not to make any sounds.
A few years later, my parents bought me a Panasonic RX-5150 as a birthday present. A great step forward, since now I could record FM broadcasts directly. This was important because 97.9FM (98 Rock) along with many other stations back then used to play complete sides or even whole albums. I also used to love recording "King Biscuit Flower Hour" programs.
I started getting interested in audio when I discovered magazines such as Stereo Review and Audio. I was gobbling up all these magazines, reading them cover to cover. On weekends, I would go to all of the high end audio shops. Most of them would be friendly except for one shop that ignored me because of my age. I remember the first set of speakers I bought were a pair of Infinity RS-1000's. Soon they would be replaced by Polk Monitor 10's driven with a Yamaha receiver (I believe it was a R-3) and cassette deck. The Yamaha receiver was replaced by the original MXR-150 "original" Carver Receiver.
Fast forward to college (Boston University) and I began purchasing products from NAD, ADS, Boston Acoustics, etc..
When I moved to NYC to study at Parsons, my audiophile disease had become out of control. Although I brought my system from Boston with me, I started buying stuff from B&K, Adcom, Spica, B&W, Nakamichi, Naim, Rega, Magnavox/Philips (CD players), Sequerra, Magnepan, California Audio Labs, etc... At this time, I also had yearly subscriptions to Stereophile and The Absolute Sound when they were still in their digest size format. I also used to love going to the magazine stands and picking up all of the British hi-fi rags and reading them cover to cover.
Fast forward many years and my system evolved into this. Mostly made up of Musical Fidelity front end with Vandersteen 2Ci speakers along with a VPI Scout and Logitech Squeezebox:
Which has now currently become a Naim based system with Thiel CS1.6 speakers. The VPI Scout and Logitech Squeezebox remain as does the Musical Fidelity A324 DAC: