2. misc-audio
  3. 178368-148323

How did you get started in this hobby

As a college kid, my roommate had KLH speakers, the Beatles Sgt. Peppers came out and homegrown Flemington flash came on the scene. My eyes were opened along with my ears. I visited a local audio store Audiolab and another not too far away Soundex. The effect on my listening, I was stunned by what I was hearing and how the management just let me listen to all the gear knowing I was just window shopping. I'll never forget Soundex( out by Willow Grove Pa)  letting me listen to all their rooms at different price points and more than a few occasions.One room had $30,000 each in electronics and $100,000 speakers. Well, I could not afford even the entry-level stuff but again my horizon was broadened. So off I went to NYCity with my roommate in tow. I ran into an audio store while he waited in the car and asked the sales guy what I could buy with the meager dollars I had. I picked up a pair of AR speakers, and a Dual Turntable, my roommate had an old HH Scott that was in his father's food store that did not work. I got it fixed for free by the teacher of the electronics class in my High school where  I would occasionally substitute teach ( babysit) to get beer money for college Thursday night beer sessions at the Extension bar.

Much later a fellow employee who was an audiophile got me connected with his buddy an audio salesman who sold me his Snell c2 mk.2 speakers and another of his friends who was looking to sell his Adcom GFP 400 pre amp/tuner and GFA 555 amp along with thick monster cable. Adcom was just starting up around 1980 and was thirty minutes away in New Brunswick NJ. For a box of donuts, they went over my gear and made some changes to the amp and preamp. I remember their CD player had a tendency to jump if vibrated that was fixed as well all while I waited for  just for a box of doughnuts.  Woo that was my system for almost 40 years.  I wanted something different, I found out about Audiogon and bought within a week a Technics SU G 700  and Canton speakers about two years ago at tremendous savings from local audiophiles one in bucks county near New Hope Pa., and another in Freehold NJ. That's my story. from start to finish.

Based on what I've seen here I am not an audiophile but someone just interested in listening to good music with good gear at good savings and who is intrigued by the character ( good and bad) I see on here and the stellar systems they have.

scott22
acefactory
66 posts
 

@artemus_5 and @bigtwin pretty much told my story through theirs. At 56 years of age, I can't remember not having been into music, with focus on the quality of its reproduction. It all started when I was about 4 or 5 with a single-speaker portable record player and children's 45rpm records.

After many years of collecting records and getting decent results by fiddling around with whatever components I could get my hands on, I landed a pair of Proac Studio 1 speakers when I was in my mid-20s, added a McIntosh C20 preamp, and experienced sound imaging for the first time. Since then, and most recently through the Covid period, I've invested considerably into all components (including wiring) and couldn't be happier with the experience I'm having in my listening sessions.

As @artemus_5 suggested, it's more than anything a way of life for me... 

tsushima1
1,165 posts
 

I took a tumble resulting in a bump to the head … The rest is history.

Ag insider logo xs@2x
cleeds
5,993 posts
 

That's amazing how many of us had a crystal radio set. I had one as well and it taught me a meaningful lesson when I was about 10 and wondered what would happen if I fed the earphone output into my dad's stereo - he had an H/K amp and preamp and a Telefunken tape deck. My dad was a PE/EE and encouraged these kinds of experiments.

The result was outstanding! The crystal radio's simple circuit yielded an incredibly quiet, clean signal. This probably wouldn't work with today's AM band, which is filled with digital noise and distortion, but it was a revelation at the time.

 

 

coralkong's avatar
coralkong
684 posts
 

I've always been a music fan. I grew up on rock and roll (The Who was the first band I was into).

I wanted to be a guitarist when I was a teen, played in a couple of bands, that kind of thing.

When I was about 19, my roommate at the time knew a friend in NYC who worked in an audio store and he took a bus trip and he said his buddy "hooked him up".

He set up his new stereo system, which consisted of a Sony ES amp, a Sony ES CD player and a pair of Rogers LS speakers. (I think they were LS3/5a's, NOS).

As he was hooking the speakers up, I looked at him kind of funny and (didn't want to insult him) incredulously asked "You paid HOW MUCH for THESE?"

When it was put together, he popped on a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD (who had recently died in a helicopter accident), but I was familiar with him and saw him open for Robert Plant the summer before.

In any event, he started playing the CD, and my mouth hung open.

HOLY $H!T.

I had never heard music (or a stereo system) sound like that before.

We ended up going our separate ways, but I still remember that system. As a matter of fact, I spoke with him a couple of years ago and he still has it.

That lit the fire for me.

 

scott22 OP
265 posts
 

These are fun reads of our earliest exposure to audio and also of the retailers and friends that fostered our education and exposure to what audio could be.

More to discover