When I was growing up in the early '80s, I never saw my parents play records. We didn't have a record player of any sort set up (well, there were a couple of Emerson tabletop AM/FM/phono/8-track stereos which had been hand-me-downs, but the record changers on both were never used), or any records around (everything was in the attic). My father had a stereo system in the living room, but the only components in it were an integrated amp, a tuner, and the speakers. Everything else was in the attic. My primary source of music was the '50s/60s oldies station my father's radios were always tuned to, followed by cassettes on a Fisher Price tape recorder, and later a Sony Walkman given to me by a relative.
As the '80s turned into the '90s, I started reading about CDs in various catalogs we got, including Service Merchandise and DAK. The breathless descriptions of digital perfection intrigued me, compared to the hissy quality of cassettes. As soon as they became affordable, I asked for a CD boombox for Christmas, and got one along with a CD of The Beatles 1967-1970. I was amazed at how nice it sounded compared to the cassettes I'd been playing for years. I got a Sony Discman some time after that, and it was neat, though I didn't like how short the battery life was compared to my old cassette Walkman.
Then a funny thing happened. At some point in 1994, I got ahold of a novelties catalog of some sort (the name "Johnson's" springs to mind). Among the funny gizmos and gadgets was a small replica of a
Wurlitzer 1015 "bubbler" jukebox. I became fascinated by the design, and through some odd form of osmosis I still don't fully understand, the format it played, i.e. records. I took one of the aforementioned Emerson tabletop stereos, and bought a new stylus for it at Radio Shack. I went up into the attic to get a record, and chose "Christmas with Jack Jones" for some reason. The record player in the stereo was messed up, so I managed to find another Emerson stereo (this time with a cassette player in place of the 8-track slot) at a rummage sale; it worked better than the other one, but had me wanting more.
That December, I asked for a stereo receiver for Christmas, and received one (an
Optimus STA-300 from Radio Shack). My father handed me down the Garrard 730m turntable and Sony TC-127 cassette deck which had gone with his own stereo system (I inherited the rest of it later), and we bought a pair of small Optimus speakers from the local Radio Shack to go with the receiver. The receiver had issues, but it was a start. I unearthed other records from the attic, and got other ones from yard sales and whatnot. At first, it was largely for the novelty of playing records; watching the disc spin as it played, and hearing the pops and clicks as the needle traced the groove. At some point, however, it became about more than that. I started getting better and better stereo equipment, finding better and better quality records, and I've been in this hobby ever since.
-Adam
... the mantra of my first audio Guru (self proclaimed) Chuck 
... the only remarkable thing about Chuck was how "off the mark" & wrong he was about everything. Good grief ... the years I wasted believing this guy. 
