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What started you on the merry go round?

Forgive me if this is an old thread, but can you look back and say a particular event, experience, got you started? For some it may be your Dad, perhaps attending a show, or a friend.
For me it was sometime in the Autumn of 1977. I had just started in my first residency job in the National Health Service in Devon. Ian a fellow serf in the hospital trenches had a pretty good system for the time and his salary, Linn LP12/SME 309/Shure, Monitor Audio speakers, I can'nt remember the rest. I was getting into Opera then and he played the Beecham version of Puccini's La Boheme, I bought the set about this time and it is still the first record I would rescue in a fire. It was the entry of Mimi in Act 1, scene 1. Victoria De Los Angeles was perfect on that record and it was as if an angel had come into the room. Well that was it for me and I started the long, hesitant road to where I am now, with a long gap when the kids were young.
Did any of you guys have a similar "epithany"
david12
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
A friend who had Thiel CS 0.5, Bryston 2 series preamp and power amp.

That alone was so much better than my mass market Pioneer receiver, Technics CD player, and cheap Infinity and Boston mini monitors.

That was 10 years ago.
jlambrick
138 posts
 
1976 at a store called LaBelle's. They had a very impressive audio room at the time. There were these refrigerator sized Frazier speakers, a 350 wpc Phase Linear amp and autocorrelation preamp, Kenwood granite based turntable and who knows what kind of cartridge. They played Eagles, Blood Sweat and Tears, Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker and Earth Wind and Fire. It was like they were all in the room and I was obsessed even though I was a high school kid with very little money. I tried for a while to build my own monster speakers but was never satisfied with the results. A couple of years later, I spent the previous years savings on a system with some Bose 901s, a Kenwood integrated amp, a Yamaha turntable and an Ortofon cartridge.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Don_s comment on the Large Advents is like my own. I had decided to buy a pair but walked in to hear the Infinity ServoStatic Ones playing. Had to have them.
cdc
1,773 posts
 
I had some extra money to spend.
don_s
271 posts
 
Perhaps I slightly misinterpreted the question. Consider this a prequel to my previous post.

There was no music in my house while I was growing up. My parents did not play period. And I don't mean just music. There were no older siblings to lead the way. I did not drive yet so there was no car radio.

For high school graduation an Uncle bought me a transistor radio. Yes, a stupid little radio that ran on a 9-V battery. The iPod of the 60's. I worked on an estate that summer doing yard work. The radio went everywhere with me. Not sure how I kept it in batteries.

I paid my own way through college but I managed to scrape together enough for a suitcase-style (GE) system. It was a turntable that folded down and two speakers that detached from each end. My best buddy had one so I had to have one too.

Fast forward to my first "real" job after graduate school. Woooheeee, I had money for the first time. I bought a 35mm camera and a Radio Shack (Allied) stereo system. That evolved into the Dual/McIntosh/Advent system described above.

To mix up metaphors---from humble beginnings grew the mighty oak. There might even be hope for the iPod generation yet.
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