What age did the "audio bug" hit you?

It started when I was 3 or 4 years old, watching my dad's reel to reel tapes go round and round. The stereo system must have been twice as high as me. I never had to live with poor quality sound until I moved out on my own at age 18 and had nothing but a cheap portable cassette player. It wasn't long until I gave up eating good food in order to afford my first system. Problem was, I sold all my vinyl to help pay for the system. I still regret it. Live and learn.

Cheers,

Derek Stewart

In the sixties, my Dad had a Fisher amp and a Rek-O-Kut TT which was as off-limits as a handsome young priest to a Catholic schoolgirl. One day I touched it... but I was 16 when I got my first amp, a Dyna tube integrated in a kit. That was when my sexual development became severely twisted, and the smell of melted flux and hot insulation became as indispensable to me as music itself. Today any box with a cord in the back and a dial on the front exercises an almost-irresistible attraction.

My dad had custom speakers installed in a 70's style bar type thing that held highball glasses and when opened had a mirrored back. He had a Fisher reciever and one of the original AR turntables also fitted into the cabinet. He had a bunch of records by Dylan, CSNY, Pink Floyd, etc. I used to sit around spinning discs on the turntable all day. I loved the sprung suspension design and the sound was like nothing I had heard. Later my dad bought me my first stereo for my bedroom and from there I've been collecting records and upgrading my system ever since.

It all started in the beginning, no I am not talking about the Big Bang but when I was about 5. I remember the early years when my father used to play music on his Grundig Radiogram. The equipment fascinated me. Looking at the black shiny disks spinning fast and with a needle on top of it producing all the sounds always intrigued me. I had no idea why the system sounded so good; today when I look back I can understand why! It was a one-piece system; everything was almost perfectly matched and had the tubes! I had no way of comparing the equipment, but whatever was being reproduced had sounded very good.

Oh my, I must have been 7 or 8. I lived with my grandparents in the summers, and used to go up in the attic and listen to my aunt's old record player and her 45's. I remember Johnny Cash, and the Everly Brother's Dream. It never ended from there. I always had cheap stereos until I was 18, when I actually took out a loan and bought a Realistic STA-2000 reciever (75 watts/channel!), with Mach One speakers. I never looked back.