Where did you buy your first audio gear?

Summer of 1973:  Tech Hi-Fi Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sansui 2000X + Phillips 212 TT + Studiocraft bookshelf speakers. Several months later, replaced the Studiocraft speakers with a pair of Ohm C. Still have the Sansui.  

First system in 1973 - I was 16 years old and drove from PA to East Orange NJ to some "wholesale" audio warehouse.  I found it through an ad in Stereo Review.  I had a pocket full of cash and this place was in a pretty bad section of town.  I parked on the street and ran to the front door (the door was "armored", and all the windows had bars).  Nothing was on display; you just told the guy behind the counter what you wanted, and he went into a back room and brought out the boxes. I bought a Sansui 881 receiver and a Technics turntable.        

For speakers, my brother and I went to the electronics store in our hometown.  It was set up like an auto parts store, with a couple of clerks standing behind a counter, and all the parts on shelves behind them.  One of the clerks helped us pick out woofers, tweeters, midrange drivers, and crossovers for a three-way speaker.  We then stopped at the lumber yard and picked up the wood to build the boxes, which we stuffed with extra insulation from the attic.  The speakers probably sucked, but boy were they loud!

My first attempt at HiFi was purchased from a pawn shop near the high School in Santa Monica, California and at a Pacific Stereo store closer to Los Angeles proper (I don’t remember exactly where). I got some nondescript box speakers with 10” woofers from the Pacific Stereo store that the salesman was really pushing, cost me about $200 I think. From the pawn shop I got a rather large stereo tube amp that had a problem on the left channel that no tube replacement could resolve. The component I most remember was a Fisher monaural tubed tuner that pulled in all the stations and had the sweetest sound. It had a champagne gold faceplate, and a preamp section in a separate chassis that was bolted to the tuner’s chassis. I traded it for a Sansui receiver and immediately regretted it. As nice as the Sansui looked, it didn’t sound as good as the Fisher. I made an emergency visit back home and when I returned, I discovered that my housemates had sold all my stuff (including a solid gold watch my grandmother had given me), no doubt for drugs, because, “We didn’t know if you were coming back.” The year was 1972. 
 

[I was surprised that responding to this question dredged up so many memories I had long repressed, some good, some bad, and not all shared. The past seems ever with us at times.]

The first good stereo at UNITED ELECTRONICS in Niles Oh  Kenwood 7400 receiver Janzen Electrostatic Speakers and a Technics SL-1500 turntable , way back in 1975

At about five years old I got my first equipment.  There was s big cupboard  in the basement  filled with mom canning  from the summer. On the top shelf there were two old tube radios. Mom or dad had the step ladder in the basement  for some reason and I worked hard to get it by the cupboard  and opened up. Lol I had to move it away  to get the doors open and reset it up. I climbed the ladder a got one of the radios down plugged it in and it didn't  work went back up the ladder and I brought the bakelight beauty down plugged it in and it worked. Carried up two flights of stairs  to get it to my bedroom set it on a bench I had in my room plugged it in and found a station.  I was in heaven.  That old girl lasted about five or six years I turned it on  every  night and fell asleep  to the radio every night. Sad day when it died. That was the start for me the hard work and the reward I got for my efforts i was a little  boy.