For me, it really started in '72, the day after I graduated from high school. A buddy wanted to sell an amplifier to raise thirty bucks so he could buy some of the great new weed that had just come into town. I told him I didn't play guitar, so I didn't want an amp. He told me that it was used in a stereo to listen to music, and offered to bring it over. It was a Knight integrated amp, but I don't recall anything else about it. He hooked it up to my speakers(my system was one of those units with a tuner, turntable, and 8-track in one chassis, with separate speakers), and I was stunned at how much better those speakers sounded driven by that amp. I bought it, allowing him to indulge in his addiction, and unknowingly beginning my own. Within two days, I had blown those speakers. I went to the local Radio Shack to look for better ones, and began the first of many, many auditions. I had always been a music lover, but my love for equipment as a means of getting to the music began then. It's been a wonderful 31 years! |
As early as I can remember. My dad always had high-end, built his own kits, transmission lines, single driver speakers, etc. I grew up with music and audio, and it was pretty high-end for the time; at one point in the mid-70's, when I was a teenager, he had a prototype pair of Tympani 4's, triamped with all Audio Research tube gear, SP3 preamp, SP10 turntable, top Ortofon moving coil, etc. My cousin still has the speakers, I think. Then I took a long break from high end while in college and graduate school (living on a dollar a day--love those ramen noodles) and getting started in career. Just got back into it about 3 years ago; I'm making up for lost time. |
My interest in music goes back to as early as I can remember, just something I always loved and was always around. Everyone used to sing around the house as well as the family get togethers, always there was music.
The first time I became interested in well reproduced audio was when my Dad brought home an album around x-mas early 60's. He put it on the Zenith console and I was just amazed at how natural and good it sounded. Couldn't put it into words but I really loved the sound and the music. The album is Pops Christmas Party, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops and is a shaded dog recording that I have to this day. My older sister still remembers how much I loved listening to that album during the holiday seasons. It probably spured my interest in participating and playing music through my school years. The serious hi-end of it all started in the mid 80's. |
In the 50s my dad had a Capehart council record player and tuner with built in speakers. I undergrad school I bought dyna audio gear and roomed with a guy who had a Hartley 24" woofer which we mounted into a sewer pipe. Everything was pretty reasonable and gradual after that until in the early 70s, I heard the Infinity Servo Stats. Life has not been the same since. I have had 14 different speakers since then, countless amps and preamps, seven different turntables, 12 cd players, six dacs, 17 different types of cables, 35 different line filters, 11 different feet, etc. Life is great! |
Warren,
My Dad had a Fisher reciever, Rotel turntable and AR speakers.
Anyway, it started for me listening to the above system, staring at album covers. Man I used to lay on the floor and stare at "Tarkus" for hours. My 'rents had no trouble playing loud music around this kid...and I love them for it. Not just one kind of music either...rock, jazz, bluegrass, classical....you name it.
Cheers,
Z |
I don't recall any particular epiphany that led to my love of good audio equipment, but I do recall my exposure to the Beatles "Love Me Do" as being a significant musical milestone as a young child (8 years old I think). I have an 8 year old son that has a special love of music too. All four of my children enjoy music, but it is easy to see that my 8 year old has an extra special affinity to music. |
I started loving music since I was 5 first by dismembering an old gromophone for curiosity but was warned by parents not to do the same thing with tube radiola that might kill if I go inside. Played my own records on tube radiola ever since that is a huge box built in arround mid-50's and than later-on picked up listened tunes with my small 1/4 vintage accordion.
Later-on I went to school of music and "upgraded" to 1/2 i.e. "half" accordion and finally as my height increased "upgraded" to 1/1 120 bass-chord buttons Weltmeister. I quit school of music leaning towards more to improvise than playing classics and started to play in bands and even on holiday occasions and parties and later-on added DIY sound pickup to be able to plug this one onto the head-amp having a gained knowlege from Radio Communications school... Gaining some bucks from party musical entertainments I bought myself a system and practicing instrument, playing were going more and more far away and went completely out here in US. I still have mine lying under the bad and collecting dust for nearly 10 years next to nice system I recently built. |
At a boarding school in New Zealand, late 1940's. The headmaster compelled us to listen to classical music on his state of the art rig. Although monophonic, it used two large speakers. I don't know what the electronics were, but the turntable had a cartridge that used removable wooden needles. The needles had a triangular cross section, and were frequently resharpened using a specially designed clipper. |
Mid sixties, fold-up suitcase type Zenith stereo was my first unit(Dave Clark Five,"Glad All Over" my first LP and still have it!). Then Lafayette integrated and tuner and then a Dynaco SCA-80 and Dynaco A-25 speakers then on and on and on.......I have had many systems but I still don't consider myself an audiophile and still don't have a great stereo system. Maybe some day. Cheers |
Why, what does a dumb young kid know??? Maybe all the talk about them seemed like they were still together. Remember this was my intro!
I do remember hearing about Jim Morrison dying though... then the DJ played 'Riders on the Storm.' Or maybe I just think I remember it. It was strange days. |
Marakanetz...
I don't recall that cables and interconnects were anything special. In fact, I wonder if the word "interconnect" was ever used in 1978....
I imagine the interconnects were whatever crap came with the individual components. I do recall that his speaker cables looked like regular brown electrical cord. woo-hoo!! take about "hi-fi"!
cheers!
ps....I'm a little surprised that no one was curious enough to ask what the song was that started all of my reminiscing. |
Circa 72, when in my early teens I heard a system that one of my moms younger hippie brothers took in as payment on some plant products he was distributing at the time, an integrated Marantz receiver with built in tt, and a pair of 3 way speakers of unknown brand and scratched out serial numbers. I walked into his room as Zeppelins Levee was blaring away and I was hooked. Ironically, I bought the system from him a few years later when he needed some quick scratch to get out of town and moved to Tempe,AZ for "business". I can't recall what I did with that Marantz, possibly the result of saidsame plant products. It was a beauty with an excellent receiver. I really wish I knew what I did with it....... |
I was nine years old (1970) and won a contest selling the most new newspaper subscriptions door-to-door in my neighborhood. I won one of those all in one crappy systems but I loved it, listened to music night and day in my room. Over the next 4 years I cut lawns, baby-sat, shoveled snow, painted houses, etc and saved my cash. Every Saturday I'd go downtown Montreal to buy records and kept passing by this small audio shop with some cool looking gear in the window. One day I passed by and it was quiet so I wandered in so see/hear what this stuff was. The owner was a young guy and enthusiastic about audio and spent a fair amount of time educating me on what gear he sold, what made one amp better than another, speakers (electrostatic vs. boxes), you name it. Quite something, taking the time to educate a 13 year old kid with a couple of used records under his arm and unlikely to have any money. He carried Quad, Thorens, Mission, B&W, and a new product called New Acoustic Dimensions (NAD). Great guy, Claude got me hooked on audio for life. My first real system was the venerable Thorens TD147 with stock arm and Supex 900 pickup, Mission 700 speakers, and a NAD3020 integrated. Let's just say the time he took to share his audio passion with a young kid sure paid off for him over the years. I still patronize Sound Ideas and we became good friends over the years. |
Beatles? S&G? 1972? What were you smoking, there, at 11? Being 11 in '72 and 11 in '64--I was watching the Beatles, on Ed Sullivan, singing I Want to Hold Your Hand. Man, was that something. Shindig, Hullabaloo, the Smothers Brothers. Here I go again. peace, warren |
Nrchy, I realize it may have seemed otherwise at the time to an 11-year-old, but by '72 both The Beatles and S&G had been broken up going on a couple of years... :-) |
It all started when I bought a Linn, in 73, and heard old Quads well driven. Still have a Linn as a spare and would have old Quads if I had space for a second system. What I heard then is not so far away from what I hear now.. and it was far less work and expense. |
It all started when I put in my own after market 8 track unit with speakers into a van I bought. At that time it was one of the best sounding units in my home town. I eventually put some into my friends cars and the rest is history. Then someone said you should hear the home equipment. Set the hook and crank me in. Many years later I still get a kick out of this crazy hobby. But now I look for new artist or rediscover old ones.
See Ya! |
When I was growing up in downtown Milwaukee we lived in a two family house. We were quite poor and only had an old tube bakalite radio. My mother always had it tuned to the 'Christian' radio station so I never heard any other music.
One day I was in the bathroom doing my business when I heard music coming from the people living upstairs. It must have been due to some strange plumbing anomoly. It was around 1972 and I was just 11 years old and intrigued. They were playing 'Rock and Roll' it was like nothing I had ever heard. The Beatles were still around, Simon and Garfunkel ruled the airwaves.
I spent way too much time in the bathroom, to my mothers chagrin and puzzlement. Eventually I began to recognize different tunes.
I was in Junior High before I got my own radio. It was an old H & R Block throw-away. Thank goodness they decided to buy something better for the offices.
But if it weren't for that pressing engagement when I was a kid I might never have spent so much money and time on this obsessive past time, and I would have missed out on all this crap. |
I grew up in a home with a killer console stereo. Mom and Dad had just gone to the race track for an afternoon of betting and I was left alone with Meet The Beatles. The rest history. |
For me, it didn't start all at once. I took a few years of electricity/electronics in high school -- even designed and built a tube amplifier. That got me hooked on electronics.
During high school, a local radio station in Chicago played very unusual album oriented rock, etc. I still remember listening to Osibisa at 2:00 am. That got me hooked on music.
When I went to college, a couple of engineering pals had very fine systems (one all tube, one all solid state). Hearing quality music through those systems got me hooked on sitting down and attentively listening to music while appreciating the reproduction. One of them ended up doing the technical work for a major midwest audio chain and I bought my first system there and loved it.
Take that history and mix in a healthy dollop of obsessive behavior and insanity and here I am. Just another audioholic on the Gon ;-) |
Padgitt's Hi Fi. (I think that's how they spelled it.) Waco, TX. Mid 70's. I was a poor, starving law student at Baylor University. All I could do was drool and dream over the blue glow of McIntosh tube gear amid the sounds of the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt.
Funny thing. By the time my bank account finally caught up to my taste in tube gear, I had moved on to Audio Research. |
Yes, except is was my next door neighbor that came home from Viet Nam tour with a load of Japanese audio gear. It seemed awesome at the time. |
It was, like, yesterday. Went to my friend's house and he played me the Sounds of Silence (shows you how long ago that was. It wasn't an oldie, then) through his father's Fisher receiver and AR3 speakers. I went out of my mind, especially when he really let it crank. Probably had more of an impact on me, then any other thing I've heard, since. We're talking impact, here. Audiomania germination. Brain synapses. Was possessed from that day on to get rid of my Zenith victrola. I had been released. That was back in the '60s.-- Music, drugs, psychedelia, King, Kennedy, Beatles, the end of stockings (what a shame), Turkish Taffy, Star Trek, The Graduate---take it from me, my fellow audiophools. I've got students calling. peace, warren |
Do you remember what speaker cable and wires were used?:-) |
