Pioneers in the history of higher end/accurate sounding components....and you..

Arnie CES

Kloss, Tandberg, Conrad and Johnson. Peter Snell.

SpeakerDoctor who gave me some of the best cap buying advice ever, as well as offering me his insights into using AMT tweets.

Eric Alexander and Duke LeJeune helped me a lot with speakers. Keith Herron helped me understand the importance and meaning of timing. Krissy Tetrault proved the signal is not what we think it is. Chris Brady helped me with the ideas and a lot of the Teres Audio components that went into building my turntable. DJ Casser taught me a huge amount about vibration control, with components and concepts that 30 years later still pay big dividends even though they have been massively improved on by what I've learned from Rick Calder and Max Townshend.

Stewart Marcantoni started it all, introducing me to Caelin Gabriel and Ted Denney, and pulling the strings that got me into the Talon room one year at CES. So probably better include Mike Farnsworth of Talon.  

Oh, and Michael Fremer. When having narrowed it down to a VPI or a Basis I could not make up my mind, Michael Fremer called and we had a nice long talk. At the end of which I had learned one of the most important lessons of all: that the way to do it is to talk about how things sound, because once you know enough about that you will not need anyone to tell you. You yourself will know what to do.

I would guess we all know that this is also a generational question.  The influences of each decade from the 1940s on would be different people with some overlap of the people that were productive for a long time.  A major thank you to those designers and business people that have helped me have so much pleasure from their efforts.