Senior Audiophiles - Audiophile since the 60-70's?

Graduated from Polk Model 10A to Rogers LS3/5A in late seventies; worked at Goddard SFC in early/mid 70s when they still used military grade audio tubes for some equipment - an audio buddy worked in maintenance heheh; bought prototype Berning 30 watt tube amp in 1980, graduated to BWS tube gear.

Man, you guys are young! Have any of you snuck through your mother's and two grandmothers' houses stealing every sewing needle you could find, just so your two pound arm could have something other than a cactus needle. I was doing this at age seven, so I could play the old mono tubed record player given to me by my grandfather. At least it was powered-didn't have to crank it up. Had grandpa's old classical 78s and my dad's old big band 78s (he actually loaded and unloaded commercial jukeboxes and got to keep the used 78s). Dad's old Philco was really nice for good mono FM.

Then at age 15 rode my bike two miles carrying a full sized accordion which I traded (unbenownst to my family) for RCA's first stereo record player - second speaker in the lid, ceramic flip needle. Grounded for a long time, but the music sure sounded a lot better.

Used Sears and Penneys all in ones until I got out of college - just about the advent of solid state times. Then in graduate school went to an all Dynaco system with a Garrard. It's been uphill ever since with hardware and software. Still buying vinyl (7-9000), RTR tapes, CDs (yuck), and SACDs --- make cassettes and OTR tapes. No interest in HT or surround sound. Semi-retired and finally get to listen a lot, including FM stereo.

I really get upset with the youngsters who are interested in CONVENIENT music -- analog is "just too much bother".

In my day we just banged rocks against our ears, and we liked it! Stoned head banging rockers we were. It was just a fad though. After a while the novelty wore off. No matter how hard we banged rocks against out selves we just couldn't hear anything anymore.
...............With appologies to the 10,000 year old man

In had Dyna mono gear in undergraduate schools. I bought Radio Shack electro static speakers and a Thorens 124 and Fisher 440T in 1961 during my brief period of working in business. The Thorens at least was okay. I bought some old tube gear in grad. school, and later Rectilinear 3 with a Dyna 120 and a Crown 150 preamp on getting out. Everything was cool for a while until I heard Infinity ServoStatic 1s playing through the open door in a stereo store. I had to have them and ARC SP3, and Dual 51 and Dual 75.

Since then I have had 14 different speakers and probably as many amps, preamps, turntables, cd players, dacs, cartridges, and cables. I have also had 35 different ac filters and tried at least 27 different power cords.

There is no question about my favorite era-today's. I would not trade by present system for any in the past, although after once abandoning Klipshhorns, I went back to horns with fervor after hearing low power SETs.

I think many have abandoned audio for video and MP3 and computer crap, but present day designers know more and have better parts to make great stuff. Fortunately some good music is available. Most pop musicians cannot play and few singers can sing on key. I remember my grandfather and father saying that and vowed to never say it myself, but hey I saying what I hear.

I first became interested in Hi Fi about 1953. It was a totally different hobby then. We built our own amps and speakers, and not from kits. Schematics were published in the mags, and in the RCA Tube Manual, and we would go to the electronics parts store (like Harvey radio in NYC) and buy a bunch of resistors, capacitors, transformers, tubes...etc and go to work with the soldering iron. We were creative: for example I built more than one amp using a bread baking tin for a chassis!

Of course we constructed all kinds of enclosures for loudspeakers, and we even modified drivers by doing things like glueing stips of balsa wood onto the cone to control breakup.

Of course there was always Heathkit, RIP. When other kits were introduced, like Dyna Kit, and Eico, you didn't need to know anything about how the electronics worked, and the nature of the hobby changed.

Today audiophile skills relate to knowing how to best allocate financial resources in the purchase of ready-made equipment. That's OK, but it really is not as interesting as the old days. It is a bit like flying an airplane today (I am a private pilot too). In the old days it took some physical coordination and skill to fly a plane like a J3 cub. Today, it's about as challenging as driving a car. In the case of jetliners, the pilot's job is to program the computers that fly the plane.