the gateway product that turned you into an audiophile

I had a hand-me-down Onkyo rack system I got from my dad when I went to college. It was good but then my roomate and I discovered separates when visiting Second Sound in Boulder way back in the early 90s. I found a used Adcom GFA-2 amp and pre-amp there. I traded in the Onkyo system for that set-up. It was a "step up" for me in sound quality. Then I bought an affordable Sony 5-disc changer. My speakers were some Advents (can’t recall the model). I had a great sounding system for what it was back in my ramen-eating college days. My dad gave me one of his reel-to-reel decks, and I would make 3-hour-long mix tapes for our house parties as well. 

My brother had a HH Scott Stereomaster 342 AM/FM Stereo Receiver,  Acoustic Reasearch (AR2) speakers with a Garrard turntable in the early seventies. What a great sounding system.

For me, this proved to be a somewhat a tricky question.  I first asked myself when I first realized that I had fallen in love with music.  Then, I asked myself when I first started to really care about the sound quality of the equipment used to play the music I liked.

I started buying my own 45s when I was around 7 or 8, after using my aunt's portable tabletop 45 record player for a few years.  The first 45 that I bought was "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton.  I was around 7 or 8 years old then and happened to be at my grandmother's house.  I must have played that 45 ten times in a row, if not more.  My grandmother never said a word; never asked me to give it rest!  God Bless her!  That kicked off my 45 record collection.  Wish I still had those things!

Sometime around 1960 or so, my parents bought a Grundig stereo console.  It had a turntable, AM and shortwave radio built into it, as well as speakers or maybe it was just a single large speaker.  That's when I began my LP collection.

Sometime in the mid 60s I became much more aware or concerned with the sound quality that the equipment I was using could deliver.  That's when I bought a stereo in a box type thing that came with 2 small bookshelf speakers and an amplifier with built-in 8-track tape player.  Can't remember the name of that thing.  However, my friends and I thought it sounded pretty good.  That kicked off my 8-track tape collection.  Soon thereafter, I bought a Craig reel-to-reel and started recording music from AM radio stations and, later, from FM when that became more popular.  I'd have to say that was the spark that started the audiophile fire.

In the late 60s, one of my high school musician friends wanted me to listen to a new stereo system that he had just purchased.  Can't remember the model numbers but it was a Sansui integrated amp, Thorens TT and a pair of bookshelf speakers.  I think the TT cart was a Shure.  He loved Chicago.  So, we played their new album and the sound from that system just blew me away!  I have to say that's when the audiophile bug started, for me.

In 1972, I had finally saved enough money to purchase what I consider to be my first entry-level audiophile quality two-channel stereo system.  This very same friend, much more knowledgeable about stereo equipment than I at the time, took me to Tech HiFi in Cambridge, MA.  That was a kid in the candy store moment for me!  After spending money that I really should have devoted to college expenses, I walked out with a Sansui 2000X receiver, Phillips 212 TT equipped with a Shure cart and a pair of Studiocraft speakers that I eventually upgraded to Ohm C a year later.  The rest, as they say, is more history.    

when i bought my first turntable as a teenager that came with a ceramic cartridge and spherical stylus, then upgraded to an empire moving magnet cartridge with shibata stylus after much research.   wow what a difference !  

I loved music and had an average receiver/turntable/speaker rig. Nothing special. I was only making @$1.25 hr so...

I did enjoy recording FM music on my Sony 7" Reel to reel but playback and finding tracks was a pain. So, I started buying used lp's. What bothered me about them was the surface noise. I was reading my copy of Audio magazine when I saw an ad for the SAE 5000 Impulse Noise Reduction unit. Supposed to remove clicks and pops from playback. As luck would have it the audio store in town was an SAE dealer. I won't get into how it worked or didn't but it was good enough for me to cough up the $ to buy it. It started me down the path. I have no regrets except for wishing I kept some of my "stuff".