member system photos???

I forgot to mention one downside of Tucson besides the summer heat -- wages are definitely on the low side. I guess there's no place that has it all.

Nill, I don't know what to say. I don't even know what you said... But I'm glad it made you feel better. :)

Personally, I don't try to compete with other people because there will always be plenty of people that have more expensive gear and that will spend more money than I could.

My goal is simply to obtain the best gear that I can afford. If it sounds like music to me, then it doesn't matter what other folks think. But I'm finding, as many others have, that sound quality does not always coincide with the sticker price. Fun to me is finding high bang-for-the-buck gear and then trying to put together complete systems using such components.

We are have a much longer trip to the ocean than we did last year. Now, it's a 5 minute car ride (15 minutes by bike). We use to (in our last place) walk down the block. Yep, that is the ocean. Our new place required some major compromises in the way of my rig set up. I am happier than I have ever been, rig wise, but my set up is not acoustically near ideal, but sounds wonderful, never-the-less, and looks great in its' new crib. Bottom line? My wife isn't driven me nuts anymore with speakers sitting out in the living room, and all the other stuff. She's happy and it translate to more musical enjoyment for me. Life and sound are good now. 3000 sq feet or 20,000 sq feet: couldn't live in it if I couldn't get to the beach in 30 minutes. I'm an inveterate beach bum....peace, warren

Great post up above by Tireguy. Nice to see him post again.

We paid $59K when we bought it many years ago.

Let's update that and say it's now $259K. What amazes me is, how can you even build a home for that amount I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, where housing prices are in the stratosphere, but even if I scraped my lot and put up a new 2500 sf home, it would cost in the neighborhood of $600K to build. Are construction costs so much less in other parts of the country?

So Newbee, where are your system pics? ;)
Arthur

Aball, I was wondering when some one would ask. I lack a digital camera. I'm still a film addict. Go figure, I'm still a tube addict as well. Besides who ever pays any attention to the advise of a newbee anyway. :-)