What started you on the merry go round?

In 1967, I was 10, and my Dad had a Lafayette system (tube receiver, Criterion? speakers, Garrard turntable). I vividly recall hearing the Mamas & Papas- the harmonies had me transfixed. It sounded so much better than when I heard it on AM radio. I knew that there was something better out there. My parents were into Otis Redding, Beatles (Sgt Pepper), Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke.... They started my love for music (I still listen to all of the above). The desire to hear it at it's best was fomented back then.
Ironically, when I finally got my first cheap system ( Sansui receiver/ BSR mini-changer/ cheap Ohm speakers), they'd yell, "Turn that ****down!". Now, they ask me to burn copies of the same **** for them. :-}

Not really an epiphany, but a long trail to the rabbit hole.

When I was young, my parents (dad) listened to a lot of music on this funky system he set up with an HH Scott tube receiver, old Garrard record changer and two large "full spectrum" speakers hidden up in the rafters somewhere. The music - mostly jazz, musicals, soundtracks and opera - was rich and loud, and it seemed to come from Heaven. By the time I was about 8 years old, I had learned how to climb up and put records on my Dad's system. The next thing I knew, I received a Westinghouse portable record player with a built in speaker, the one that had a plastic molded top that closed like a clam shell. My much older brother and sister gave me newly minted copies of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour and I was hopelessly smitten. Shortly after that I got a little transistor radio that I would listen to it incessantly. By the time I was in high school, I was spending most of my meager income on putting together the best sounding system I could, and buying and borrowing records to make high quality cassette tapes for use in the car and at parties.

I took a long break from my early ride on the merry-go-round for excessive schooling and child rearing, and was spurred back a few years ago by my wife of all people who said "Honey, it would be nice to be able to listen to the radio". At the time we only had a very old integrated amp, a little bit less old CD player and some cool looking but modest sounding home brew speakers. I interpreted my wife's comment as "Honey, go out and learn everything you can about music reproduction in the new millennium, and don't come home until you have gotten the most musical system we can barely afford with a plan to gradually improve it for the next twenty five years", or something to that effect. In this recent quest I can honestly say I have heard some really nice sounding systems. Still no epiphany, but a gradual reawakening of a deep seated interest.

I thought by "merry-go-round" you meant a quest for better sound, or at least better equipment, not any initial exposure to recorded music. If it is the latter, I would have to say the old tube radio in the kitchen of my childhood every evening blaring a show called "Hits on Parade" out of CKVL Verdun, Quebec, if memory serves, that my older sisters would invariably listen to.

You said it Sjungdahl! You said it very, very well!

This could almost be a synthesis of many of the above experiences. In junior-high and high school, I could only drool over the pictures and descriptions in magazines of japanese top-line Kenwood or H/K gear while I worked to save for college and told myself that my Soundesign one-piece with one-way speakers (with fake chrome ring to make them look two-way) was adequate.

College is where "it" happened in stages. My future best friend and roommate had a mediocre component system with a H/K xm400 cassette deck. We were both amazed that with frequent adjustment, the deck would duplicate LP sound to the limits of the rest of the system. After meeting my future wife, we decided to invest in a decent sound system that we would share between my and her apartments. I still remember "it" occurring at a small shop run by one man, who put Cat Stevens' "Longer Boats" through a set of Sound Source speakers (made in Cuthbert, Georgia, in the early '80's) at high volume without any degradation of sound. Amazing. We were simply accustomed to highly distorted Led Zep or Rush or Neil Young (who already sounded highly distorted anyway) blasting away in some sofa-equipped basement to that point.

The obsession actually seeped in throughout my early adulthood-- sitting with friends and dates in whomever's living room (or whatever you call the front room of an apartment), socializing and introducing each other to whatever we were discovering at the time. This always involved placing an LP on a turntable, hitting it with the ubiquitous Discwasher, then mutual anticipation at the needle drop. A mixdown of the latest favorites on metal cassette was the medium of gift exchange among my friends, male and female. None of us watched television. This ritual and intentional focus has been lost in the digital age...

Music has always had a crucially supportive role in my life, but as I got busy with grad school and family, I acquiesced to the convenience of plugging a CD changer into the "aux" input of my trusty preamp and allowing the trusty old system to provide a backdrop.

In my attempt to regain that sense of deliberate anticipation, I have gone back to analog over the past few years. I now own nine or ten vintage decks bought for pennies on the dollar, plus associated vintage electronics and refoamed classic loudspeakers, and am saving for a real, modern, off-the-merry-go-round stopper system. I am hoping to infect others, including my children, by gifting them an entire system whenever they show a real interest. Until then, I achieve "it" whenever I place a classic LP bought at one of my local thrift stores for $1 or less and cleaned by my new ritual of Orbitrac followed by VPI 16.5, pour a glass of cabernet, and enjoy the snap, crackle, and pop through a 25-year-old system (with modern cartridge) that I could only dream about back then...