Were you an audiophile in the 1980s and 1990s?

HP copyrighted the term "High End" for TAS even though he wasn't the first to use it or to review high end equipment.

Sounds like you've been into high end audio longer than I have.  I was one of the founders of the Northern California Audio Society in 1979 and I'm still in the Bay Area.

You might enjoy my book, even with your strong opinions. 😁

Oh yeah Mike, your book is already in my Amazon cart. ;-)

Before I visited Walt’s Livermore shop, I went up to Berkeley to investigate a newly-opened storefront. I can’t remember what he called his place, but it was the 1-man operation of David Fletcher, later known for the Sumiko MDS-800 tonearm and SOTA turntable. The shop was a mess, like the desk of the mad genius he was!

I also visited Sound Systems In Palo Alto, where I heard the Infinity Servo-Statics. But the owner and his one employee were such a-holes I continued my search for a great high end dealer. I found him in Walter Davies, who was not only an experienced listener, but also a trained technician. A good thing, too, as when I turned on my brand new ARC SP-3 it made a loud "POP", and I smelled smoke. Yes, the pre-amp blew a resistor the first time electricity was applied to it. Welcome to ARC ;-) .

Roger Modjeski of Music Reference fixed a lot of broken ARC amps in his lifetime, so when building his amps used parts rated for ten times the voltage they would see in the circuits in which they were employed. Bill Johnson said he built his amps to last 20 years; Modjeski said 100 years. My Music Reference amps will outlive me. ;-) TAS reviewer Dick Osher thinks very highly of the MR RM-9 Mk.2, newly-returned-to-TAS writer Mike Fremer the same of the RM-200 Mk.2. If I'm not mistaken (@clio09, you there? ;-), Roger’s favorite of his amps was the RM-10.

The Absolute Sound was an absolute revelation to me when I came across its tiny Readers Digest size corpus at a magazine stand somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. Up until then I'd been reading High Fi News/Stereo Review and Audio, and the subjective "What does it actually sound like?" focus was just plain wonderful. It didn't hurt that Harry Pearson was a first class writer.

It was only some time later that, while searching for the latest issue of the who-knows-when-it-comes-out TAS that I came across Stereophile. In any case, I've been addicted to TAS and Stereophile ever since. I love 'em. They litter the floor of  my stereo room. I feel like a heartless cad when I toss one out. To be sure, I also enjoyed searching down the British mags...reading about gear that was singularly unavailable in the U.S.

It’s informative to compare the writing styles of JGH and HP. The former’s reviews were very to-the-point, the latter’s verrryyy long, and rather "flowery". One might even characterize them as turgid (I do). When reading them I couldn’t help but think "Geez, this guy really likes the sound of his own voice."

Harry’s other writers also weren’t audio professionals, but rather dentists and lawyers with deep pockets. Just audiophiles, like you and I (except for their deeper pockets ;-). I don’t care if a review is "well written", I care about what it says, and who is saying it. Yes, I’m strongly opinionated. Is that a bad thing? ;-)