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What was your very first piece of gear that got you started you off?

My First real systen was a Pioneer SX580 receiver,Sharp RT10 cassette deck,
Garrard Turntable and Sansui S37 Speakers. The receiver,Speakers and cassette deck I got for Christmas. I was in High School. The receiver played tunes for quite a few parties at my parents house when they went out of town. I still have the speakers and turntable.

Harry

Harry
 
When I got out of college I bought a used dealer demo Rotel rig. It got stolen a few years after that but I think the amp and pre were RA/RC 870's. I also had a matching tuner. I can't remember what the speakers were. I then lived through the next 15 years on equipment that can only best be described as lo-fi. My rebirth came quickly and abrubtly about a year ago when I got my hands on my grandmothers equipment. Marantz 7/8, McIntosh MR71, Thorens 124. Needless to say I was quite plesantly surprised when I did a little research into the equipment.
 
Mine was in 1977/1978 (forget)

Was down at stereo store... heard some Electrovoice Interface D's... bought the last pair they had and still own them today.

Interestingly... when I bought them...I had NOTHING to play them with and was broke (being in high school at the time) so I actually took them over to my girlfriends apartment and let HER use them... also... I then acquired a Pioneer CTF 1000 tape deck and left it there too... Finally I got a CR-2040 and brought the whole mess home at which point, my mother (who had NO idea I was amassing this) freaked out :whip:
 
Might add that in 1979 I bought a pair of LaScalas and still own them to this day. Took all that (and an Akai 747, 3bx & other goodies) off to college... My dorm room was ROCKING :rockon: :rockon:
 
My uncle upgraded his system and gave me his Garrard Lab 40 and a small integrated amp (name forgotten). Needing speakers I soon purchased a new pair of AR 4x's. I was probably 13 or 14 at the time. My uncle's generosity got me started on a lifelong love of audio.
 
A Pioneer SX-1080 receiver that I bought in Oct. '78 for $480 with my enlistment bonus($2000) for selecting the Infantry.
I still have the receiver and it's in great shape.
 
Well, when I was 2 or so, my father had a Sony HT receiver, STR-1070X, Bose 10.2's, a good Sony cassette deck, and a Pioneer CLD-M90 LD player, too.

At age 3 I was makin tapes, and at age 5, my father gave away the Bose's, but held on to the equipment. The receiver is now with a friend, and the rest of it is GONE. Long dead. my audio hobby really started with trying to replace the Bose's. Just kinda went from there.
 
Great Story!

Paul C said:
By the time I was about 13 or 14 a neighbor, Mr. Welch, was building some Heathkit stereo gear.
We did an amp, tuner, and eventually, the Holy Grail, the Heathkit color TV.

Soon after he helped me con my Dad into buying our family the Heathkit Compact Stereo you see in my avatar. Mr. Welch convinced Dad that I could build it myself, no problem.

Dad walked in with a pair of Harmon Kardon bookshelf speakers under his arms, also in walnut.
Dad said simply, "Here, we'll be needing these, won't we?" A cool Dad or what?
So there I am, sitting there with that smug expression on my mug, listening to the Beach Boys in Duophonic (fake stereo from the mono original). :music:

I built it myself.

:D
Click to expand...

Paul,

What a great story! I built a Heathkit receiver and a Heathkit color TV. My boys still talk about the TV and my older son uses the Heathkit receiver I built in 1972.

My first piece of audio gear was a little RCA 45 record player Santa brought me when I was 5. Here's a page with a similar unit (on the right): http://www.downstairsrecords.com/about/rpm.html

I didn't have a built in amp or speaker, so we used an old tabletop radio chassis with a 4" speaker with it.

I got $1 a week allowance and it went to a 45. I still have almost all I bought as a child. Many have a dab of fingernail polish on one side because I bought them before I could read. Somehow I could tell the records apart even though most were on RCA Victor, but couldn't tell which side was my favorite.

That little record player is my "Rosebud" and it proudly sits in a place of honor in my home office.

Doug
 
1974 bought the "Magnum 100" at Schaak Electronics. It was a Harmon Kardon 330B with BSR tt and Omega IIIB three way speakers. Not a bad little system for a 14 yr. old.
 
Hmmmm, first piece of equipment that got me going. I was at the ripe old age of 5 and it was a Philco radio. Used to listen to my programs at night, The Shadow, Roy Rogers, etc. One night it made a loud "pop", no more sound. Went to the kitchen and got a butter knife and took the back off and found a resistor across the off/on sw/volume control that blew up. Had enough sense to unplug it. Showed it to my uncle who was an electronics tech for the military and he repaired it for me. From there on, anything that involved electricity I was interested in. Made a living as a teenager repairing tube televisions in my neighborhood. Even had an old Hitchcock Oscope given to me to play with. Those were truely the days!
 
A Miranda 7" RTR with built-in speakers & teak cabinet that my dad brought home from a submarine cruise in the far east. I used it to record from FM radio, and also bought some pre-recorded tapes for it as all of his were classical music - I didn't develop a taste for that until later but I remember the one I did like was The Virtuouso Trumpet. I have a copy of that in vinyl but wish I'd kept the reel.

Then, I bought my first "real" components on a layaway at Sound Co. here in San Diego, in 1976: Yamaha CA-400, Advent 201A. Wish I'd kept them, too...

John
 
the thing that got me started was my older brother and his Pioneer SX-1250 with his Kenwood LS-408B's he had in 1978. I was a precocious 6 year old and I still remember the first time he turned it on. My eyes got as big as saucers! From that moment on, I was hooked :D To this day I still have the SX-1250. I gave my brother back the LS-408B's and he is re-living his young days again, lol! He couldn't beleive I still had the Kenwoods after all these years.
 
A pair of B&W CM1 bookshelf speakers, new, from a nearby HiFi dealer.

I'd been looking at them for a while after dangerously giving a listen in a local HiFi store and being blown away at how much better they sounded compared to my Bose Sounddock. So, I asked around, not having the cash to buy both the speakers and an amplifier, and it turned out that my Dad had an older Harman/Kardon AVR30 Home theater receiver in the basement. I brought that up to school, and, in my largest consumer purchase with my own money to the point, bought the CM1s.

The day I got them home and set them up, I realized that my Airport Express had actually been venting low frequency noise into the signal, which didn't ever show up with the sound-dock. So, I went out and got an AppleTV too. It's only snowballed from there. :thmbsp:
 
Well, I had a Craig 8-Track player w/speakers that I used until I got married. Didn't know it would be a bit vintage later.

About 83 or so I got my first system:
JVC Rack with R-S33 receiver, SK-303 speakers, QL-A5 TT w/Grado FCE cart., & Sharp RT10 cassette player. Loved that system.

Rome
 
My parents had an old console in the mid-'70s that didn't get much use (not a very musical family, apart from me), as well as an early-'80s Kenwood silverface system that I used on and off throughout the '80s. I inherited the Heathkit receiver (plus some speakers of unknown provenance) that my Dad had built for fun, and I remember listening to the FM quite a bit for a month or two (never had the gumption to get a source for it), but then we moved and something happened to it. Easy come, easy go.

Didn't get the vintage bug till about six months ago, when I was in the market for an upgrade to my TT, and instead of going the entry-level Rega, MH, or Pro-Ject route, decided on a Thorens TD 160. It's now my pride and joy, and I soon got a couple of receivers and speakers to go with it. It's a minefield worth crossing.
 
Being in Okinawa in 1976 it was easy to get bit by the audio bug. Lots of great gear and plenty of selection. I bought some Kenwood speakers (15" woofer!), a Pioneer 10" RTR and a very nice Kenwood TT. They looked great - and after about 3 months I finally got to listen to them - as I finally had enough money to buy a Sansui 9090 receiver.
 
Let me think about this. OK, 1967, freshman at Purdue. Had a Zenith flip-down TT portable in my dorm room. Guy down the hall has a "system". It blows mine away. And he wants to sell the amp - a Harman/Kardon A50k, kit-built 15wpc tube integrated. I buy it for what, 50 bucks. Need speakers. So off to the local electronics store for a pair of AR-4x's in unfinished birch. Almost there. Sound Productions, in West Lafayette has a vintage Rek-O-Kut turntable with a mono GE cartridge for 15 dollars. The tonearm isn't wired for stereo. For 10 dollars more I get a Pickering cartridge and the cable to re-wire the arm and output stereo to the amp. This system served me well for four years. Wish I still had it.
 
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In 1967 I when was in serving in the military I walked past a High-Fi store that had a Fisher KX-90 amplifier kit. I had wanted some gear but couldn't afford anything worth having. That Fisher kit made buying a system just barely affordable. The amp was a months pay! That was my first piece of gear. Six weeks later a Perpetum Ebner 33 TT with a Shure M77 cartridge was added. Two months later a pair of AR-4's completed my first system.
 
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