What were your humble beginnings on the path to high end audio?

Fun topic. You can tell a person’s general age by what comprised their first hi-fi. My best friend was sick of the Dean of Boys at Cupertino High sending him home for a haircut (public schools had dress codes up until the end of the 1960’s; boys hair couldn’t touch their ears or their shirt collars. Didn’t want no damn hippies spreading anarchy in the schools), so he moved in with the family of another friend who had just moved to Santa Cruz---the bohemian beach town just over the mountain range separating the Santa Clara Valley from the coast, which had no such code.

I visited him shortly thereafter, and saw my first component hi-fi that he had assembled (both our families had the consoles found in just about all American homes in the 60’s). He had bought a Rek-O-Kut transcription turntable from a radio station (with a massive arm, and unknown pickup), a Scott 299 integrated amp (tube, of course), and a pair of Scott 2-way bookshelf loudspeakers. Best sound I had ever heard!

I had saved a little money made playing dances in my teen combo, and with it in my pocket headed to the electronics store in downtown Sunnyvale, the only place I knew that was selling turntables. I had money enough for only the cheapest Garrard, the Model 30, which came with an integrated arm and (I later found out) ceramic pickup. I borrowed my combo’s guitarist’s Fender Bandmaster head, plugged in the turntable and a set of headphones, and let’r rip.

Waiting for college to start in September, I got a Summer job, specifically to buy a car and a complete hi-fi. I bought a ’59 VW camper bus, and my first real system---a Garrard SL55 with Shure M44 pickup, a Fisher X-100C integrated (again, tube), and pair of AR-4x 2-ways. Having discovered Stereo Review, High Fidelity, and Audio Magazine (but not Stereophile---it wasn’t on the newsstands, and hi-fi company’s ads didn’t include quotes from JGH’s reviews ;-), I salivated for better. I got an AR XA table and Shure M91e pickup, and AR integrated amp (solid state---a move backwards from the Fisher?!)---an all-AR system. But I was becoming an audiophile now (my friend in Santa Cruz stalled in 1st gear, putting his money instead into recording equipment. He now owns a studio in LA with a 2" 24-track 3M machine, all the great mics, etc., and a playback system of all 50’s components---Altec-Lansing monitors, McIntosh integrated, Empire 598 table---the turntable Ralph Karsten rebuilds), and wanted better. Like a Dynaco pre, McIntosh power, and speakers from a new company---Infinity Sound Systems.

I finally discovered J. Gordon Holt and Stereophile, and the network of mostly one-employee/owner specialty shops popping up all over the country to sell the products of the emerging "High End" specialty companies (many of them also one-employee, or close to it, operations). One day in 1972 I made a fateful trip out to Livermore, California for my first visit to one such shop, the newly-opened Audio Arts, owned and operated by Walter Davies, now known for his great line of LAST LP, CD, and tape care products. That day just happened to be the day the head of a company I had just read about in Stereophile was also making his first visit. It was William Z. Johnson, and he had brought with him (in the plane he flew himself---must have been a pilot in WWII) a complete ARC system---SP-3 pre-amp, D51 and D75 power amps, a pair of the Magneplanar Tympani T-1 loudspeakers ARC was at the time distributing, and a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 with a prototype ARC tonearm (it never went into production) fitted with a Decca Mk.5 (Blue) pickup. The exact system (except for the arm---I got a Decca International Unipivot) I bought from Walter later that year.