Your first system and your journey...

It was circa '61, and I was 15.  I built an integrated tube amp from a kit: it was an Eico ST40.  Next came really crappy 12 inch speakers with wizzer cones, a Garrard table with a Pickering cartridge. A FM tuner and an Ampex tape deck soon joined the team.  I toiled in the lube room of a gas station in Pasadena Ca. to make all of this possible.  Looking back my first system wasn't much, but it lit a fire in me that still burns today.

Yes, I was at first pumping gas, repairing tires..etc.  Then I got a job at a high-end mens clothing store.  By the time of my senior year I was taking one 7:30 class, working full time, wearing great clothes and driving a one year old GTO...a great time that came to an end with my service in the Vietnam War.  However I survived and way too many, including my 1st cousin/friend did not.  Watching a B-52 crash with no survivers and being in situations of picking up dead bodies make a person grow up a bit too quickly.  My interest in music and stereo gear was part of the survivial.  Too many of my fellow service members got into drugs and some died......a very long time ago. 

The first recorded music I "owned" was Paperback Writer and Yesterday taped onto a C-30 cassette from the radio with In Germany Before the War on the other side.

1983, bought a stereo package at "The Brick" with AKAI turntable, cassette deck, and intergrated amp, plus Hitachi speakers including stand (old glass door type). 

My first stereo was a cheapie off-brand (electrovoice or something similar) that had the am/fm radio and record changer in one box and two little speakers with 4” drivers.  It sounded like you think it did.  When I was 16, my parents gifted me a Pioneer SX-626 receiver and in time I got a Garrard TT, Realistic Nova 7 speakers (to be replaced by Advent loudspeakers) and a Sony reel-to-reel tape deck.  It wasn’t too bad — the tape deck sounded better than records on the Garrard; I assumed the Pioneer had a better tape section than phono section.  There was a local college radio station back then that featured albums for recording — program called “Wax Museum” — that even provided a tone so you could set recording level, and that was a cool way to hear new music.