How did you get started in this hobby

My Dad.

He had 'listened in' when at boarding school during the 1920s at the dawn of radio before there were any commercial or entertainment stations.  Goodness, that's 100 years ago.  He built crystal radios from components or kits and as soon as something better came out he sold his to a schoolmate and bought the improved model.  He frequented Lisle Street in London's West End where all the radio shops were then, before the glory days of Tottenham Court Road in the 60s and 70s..  It's part of Chinatown today.

After the war he bought surplus shortwave radios that had been in warplanes.  Even into the 1970s he used one as his main radio to listen to the BBC.

In the 1950s he set aside his large gramophone cabinet with a Garrard autochanger inside and started buying audio separates.  By the early 1960s I was using these to listen to my Beatles records and so on.  When I was 14 I bought my first system, a Garrard HF and Rogers integrated amp and tuner.  He lent me two of his old speakers from his mono years, a Goodmans and a Wharfedale - yes, they didn't match.  I have spent the next 60 years moving onwards and upwards.

My dad passed in 2012, at the age of 102.  Because of failing hearing he had stopped using his hi-fi about 7 years earlier.  That system was mostly my hand me downs.  What goes around comes around.

I always have wanted good sound.  I new that my parents all in one $39 KMart Special was crap but had never heard an alternative.  In college scrimped for that first system and was so proud of it but then at the end of Undergrad had a friend get a job at a true high end store and was blown away.  I had decent mid Fi stuff into my forties when I could finally start indulging myself in audio.  Contemplating retirement soon and will probably just stay put with the same gear until I croak

I started with a crystal radio set - managed to break the glass in my steel framed bedroom window from the weight of the aerial wire! I progressed to a record deck and two speakers system which I bought with my first couple of paychecks. After college, I worked in hi fi retail for a few years and have stayed involved in the business since, albeit more in a consulting role while doing other things as my day job.

From reading the responces it looks like physical head tramma, electro shock,genetic predispositon,and the influnce of significent others are the root causes of becoming an audiophile lol.

My dad purchased an Allied bundle in the mid 60’s that included an Allied receiver, Garrard turntable, and Knight (?) speakers. It wasn’t a high end system by any means, but still a cut above the average home system at the time. As a kid , I thought it was pretty cool.