How lo-fi was your first "hi fi"?

[Pigmy Pony]

Christmas 1971, Ernie was riding high in the charts on his milk cart, and I got a secondhand portable Philips reel to reel from Santa.

I used it to record "Top OF The Pops" by hanging the microphone over the back of a chair in front of the telly. The resultant recordings were littered with extra sounds, like doors opening and closing, my mums's voice shouting "Don't answer the door, it's the rent man", "who's ate all the lard?" and "do you have to do that in here?"

Songs like Chicory Tip's "Son of My Father" with added budgie chirps became the norm, and sounded bare without them.

I would love to still have those recordings, more for the sound of my parents' and Arthur's voices superimposed on Middle Of The Road's "Soley Soley". Arthur was the budgie.

[Batty]

22235My first HiFi was DIY, As an apprentice in the Army we made a Receiver, it was 2.5 watts RMS into 15 ohms.
When I say made I mean we built the case during sheet metalwork class, etched the PCBs in fact we even made the tuning indicator out of string and a cocktail stick.
The speakers were single driver full range affairs. All pretty basic. I added a Amstrad TP12D TT (rega copy) with a shure M55e cart and later a Goldring G800 then Nagaoka MP11.
That was great for me for about 5 years.

[steve-z]

My first setup was circa 1973, all purchased from Comet who at that time was just a sales counter you queued up to with the newspaper like price list of all they stocked.
I bought a BSR MP60 turntable complete with an ADC cartridge for £17, an Amstrad IC2000 amp for £29 and a pair of Celestion County speakers which cost £33 so I got £1 change out of £80, at the time I probably thought it sounded great, first LP I played on it was 6 Wives of Henry VIII by Rick Wakeman, those were the days [emoji16]


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[Pete The Cat]

Christmas 1971, Ernie was riding high in the charts on his milk cart, and I got a secondhand portable Philips reel to reel from Santa.

I used it to record "Top OF The Pops" by hanging the microphone over the back of a chair in front of the telly. The resultant recordings were littered with extra sounds, like doors opening and closing, my mums's voice shouting "Don't answer the door, it's the rent man", "who's ate all the lard?" and "do you have to do that in here?"

Songs like Chicory Tip's "Son of My Father" with added budgie chirps became the norm, and sounded bare without them.

I would love to still have those recordings, more for the sound of my parents' and Arthur's voices superimposed on Middle Of The Road's "Soley Soley". Arthur was the budgie.

I recorded the Christmas 1975 TOTP on a portable cassette recorder / player. The mike fell off the TV stand during David Essex's "Hold Me Close" and the sound became somewhat ambient after that, I still have the cassette somewhere.

My first "lo-fi" was an Eagle D7500 turntable with a Glanz cartridge, Bryan 9000 amp and Pioneer car speakers (using their cardboard packaging as cabinets with holes cut out for the drivers). I stil have them all somewhere too.

Our loft is full of sh1te.

Pete

[struth]

one of these was my pride and joy at time

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BXFH7M/technics-cassette-recorder-philips-netherlands-circa-1965-1960s-60s-BXFH7M.jpg

[walpurgis]

About 1971.

http://i68.tinypic.com/6tjv3k.png

http://i63.tinypic.com/2z5vpud.jpg

http://i65.tinypic.com/2u4opk0.jpg

It was bloody awful.

[montesquieu]

Pye record player/amplifier, pretty much the same as this (lifted from ebay), though with some better speakers (elliptical single drive units about a foot tall), and an old Sony tape deck connected by DIN lead:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zRIAAOSwDEtaLpC7/s-l1600.jpg

Around 1973, my first year at secondary school (though because I was boarding I didn't get to listen to it much).

My first record was Beatles Abbey Road, followed by the Classics for Pleasure Beethoven Symphony No6 conducted by Andre Clutyens, and some Bach Brandenburgs from the Woolies 50p section.

[agk]

1989. A pair of Pioneer CT959 cassette decks into a n other amp (I honestly can't remember, probably very high at the time) which fed Fender double 12" pa cabs.

[Audio Al]

My first venture must have been around 1972 I think it was a Fidelity Record Player with a lift up lid , It came from my mums Freemans catalogue paid for weekly :)

When I had paid that off I purchased another front part only with a speaker in it ( Matching fronts ) and it became stereo with a din lead connecting the two units :eyebrows:

Boy did that unit get some stick , I could not work out why the arm sometimes skated across the record :scratch:
I sorted it by putting a penny on the end for some more weight , How nieve was I back in the day . I still have all my LP's from that time and my abuse does not show as they still play very well :)

Happy Days

:santa:

[hard1175]

Christmas 1971
my Mum and Dad bought me a record player with a built in amp and matching speakers.
at 13 years old I thought it was the dogs B****ks.




Turntable Michell Gyro se, origin live onyx arm, Sumiko Evo 3 cartridge
Amp Modwright KWI 200
CD player Esoteric X03 se
speakers DIY project using Volt and Vifia drive units

[agk]

Man there are a lot of old ass dudes on here. As I always suspected.

[Martyn Miles]

My first ‘system’ composed of a BSR turntable bought for 30 bob ( £1.50 ) with a crystal cartridge.
The ( mono ) amp. was some unit thrown out by a neighbour, which I managed to repair.
The speaker was a 8” unit mounted half way down a brown sewer pipe that a friend and I ‘lifted’ from a building site.
How we managed to get that pipe upstairs without my parents noticing I’ll never know...

[walpurgis]

Man there are a lot of old ass dudes on here. As I always suspected.

:wheniwasaboy: Maybe. But some of us 'more mature' members are not above giving the young'uns a clump round the ear if they get smart! :lol:

[Pharos]

I have several things to say about ageism.

Firstly, if one realises that youth fades but if we work at what we are, we can develop qualities which sustain our life and vitality, compensating to an extent for the loss of pristineness.

Secondly, the guys at the gym used to say to me 12 years ago, "C'mon you old c***", and if I referred to anything before their past they would say, "During the war . . .", taking the piss.

I responded by saying that if they were lucky they would reach my age, and you never know, they could end up under a bus next week.

Years of application and dedication to life's tasks can produce great understanding in all those areas in which the effort has been applied, producing a character of real depth and wisdom.

There are also situations in the street in which young'uns ridicule and threaten, and at those times I am very glad that I have been bodybuilding for 33 years, increased my body mass by 50% in that time, having bench pressed 120k, and I am an ectomorph.

[walpurgis]

having bench pressed 120k

So have I. But not for many years. I'm endomorphic by the way, but carry little fat.

[struth]

used to be a lagomorph but more of a crassusomorph now ;)

[walpurgis]

http://i64.tinypic.com/23vx7pw.jpg

[perlogalism]

I too had one of Struth's Tape recorders... seem to remember it ate the batteries. My first "real" hi-fi was this. Bought around 1974 by my long suffering parents.22237

Boy were my mates jealous :stalks:

[walpurgis]

I knew somebody who carried one of these everywhere.

http://i68.tinypic.com/9vdybq.jpg

It sounded dire. But at least we had music (of sorts).

[shane]

Left channel:
http://www.thepippin.plus.com/Misc/grundig.jpg

Right channel:
http://www.thepippin.plus.com/Misc/Bush%20SRP31.JPG

Stereo image was best described as diffuse, but with the lights off and Soft Machine 1 flat out it was bloody amazing.

that Grundig was a thing of beauty.

[Barry]

My first 'system' was a very cheap 'Dansett'-type record player with a crystal pickup and a single valve amplifier emptying into a 5" x 3" elliptical. It wasn't very good at all.

It was quickly replaced by a Garrard SP25 Mk.II TT with Shure M3D cartridge, home-built Mullard 5-10 amplifier with a rudimentary preamp, and a home-built Wharfedale speaker design using the Wharfedale RS8DD driver in a 1.5 cu.ft distributed port enclosure. That was much, much better! :)

[Beobloke]

How lo-fi was my first hi-fi? Well, it was an Amstrad RP10 record player so I'll leave you to work it out!

Even more embarrassingly, I then "upgraded" it to another Amstrad - the mighty TS-56 tower system. :doh:

[Martyn Miles]

Left channel:
http://www.thepippin.plus.com/Misc/grundig.jpg

Right channel:
http://www.thepippin.plus.com/Misc/Bush%20SRP31.JPG

Stereo image was best described as diffuse, but with the lights off and Soft Machine 1 flat out it was bloody amazing.

that Grundig was a thing of beauty.

There’s one of those Grundigs in our local record shop.

[HackneyRF]

The first one I paid for myself was a Sony all in one jobbie with some Celestion Ditton 130's which are still in service at my brothers place today. The Sony All in One is no longer unsurprisingly!

[sumday]

Hmm, a Garrard SP25MK111 into a Teleton amp with about 7 watts on tap.
Speakers were homemade erm, cabs each fitted with four 8" drivers of dubious origin.

All the above was swapped for a rather good lightweight racer bike I had gotten bored of and a Webley .22 air rifle....those were the days.

On first power up I was pleased beyond belief...after a blast through a side of Judus Priest's British Steel....less so.

The amp had its power bulb blown and replaced with a square form led...not bright enough.
The SP 25?, I was in love with the strobed up TT on my neighbour's Panasonic music centre....what to do?

Well duh, why not use leftover Humbrol model enamel to paint strobe markings on the platter? Brilliant idea, so what if the paint is green.

Result...SHIT!!!
Did I mention the dust cover?
Didn't have one...so no danger of cracking.

I had this abortion for a few months until it was replaced by a gifted Regonda radiogram....which filled my bedroom but looked ace in the dark and fuelled a love of shortwave I have to this day.

[Pigmy Pony]

My first venture must have been around 1972 I think it was a Fidelity Record Player with a lift up lid , It came from my mums Freemans catalogue paid for weekly :)

When I had paid that off I purchased another front part only with a speaker in it ( Matching fronts ) and it became stereo with a din lead connecting the two units :eyebrows:

Boy did that unit get some stick , I could not work out why the arm sometimes skated across the record :scratch:
I sorted it by putting a penny on the end for some more weight , How nieve was I back in the day . I still have all my LP's from that time and my abuse does not show as they still play very well :)

Happy Days

:santa:
I got a Fidelity record player for Christmas 1972, It was a HF43 (I think), it came in grey or bright orange, I got the grey one.

We were so poor, I could only put a farthing on my tonearm

[Pigmy Pony]

My first ‘system’ composed of a BSR turntable bought for 30 bob ( £1.50 ) with a crystal cartridge.
The ( mono ) amp. was some unit thrown out by a neighbour, which I managed to repair.
The speaker was a 8” unit mounted half way down a brown sewer pipe that a friend and I ‘lifted’ from a building site.
How we managed to get that pipe upstairs without my parents noticing I’ll never know...

I bet those speakers sounded shit

[Pigmy Pony]

How lo-fi was my first hi-fi? Well, it was an Amstrad RP10 record player so I'll leave you to work it out!

Even more embarrassingly, I then "upgraded" it to another Amstrad - the mighty TS-56 tower system. :doh:

You're fired!

[hard1175]

Man there are a lot of old ass dudes on here. As I always suspected.

What’s the saying youth is wasted on the young

[Pigmy Pony]

As a youth, I was always wasted ;)

[shane]

There’s one of those Grundigs in our local record shop.

Buy it! You won’t regret it.

[Oddball]

I had one of those Ferguson decks with the built in amp with slider controls, and the 2 side speakers with din plugs !!
My mate in the next room at college had an Akai tt , a real beauty and an amp I cant recall the make of and some peachy speakers . It was like going from a tin radio to the Albert Hall :doh:

[Vinyl turner]

About 1971.

http://i68.tinypic.com/6tjv3k.png

It was bloody awful.

My first was an Amstrad TT and matching amp neither of which can I remember the model number for (but I think I may still have the amp instructions somewhere !!). They were coupled to a pair of Wharfedale Lintons, which I still have. Sadly (:lol:) neither of the Amstrad stuff survived.
All of which was bought from Comet.

A few older lads used to say that the best thing to do was to get a Garrard deck and mount an SME arm onto it. Well, I did buy a Garrard deck - just like Walpurgis's. I remember it had a smoked black acrylic lid (not hinged). That came from one of those second hand shops that sell fishing rods and Bullworkers and electric guitars, must have been less than £5.
I never did get the SME arm for it.
At the time I thought it was darn good.

[walpurgis]

Hmm. SP25 Mk.III with an SME? Has it been tried I wonder? Possibly. All sorts of 'horrors' crop up in Hi-Fi! (using the term loosely :))

[Oddball]

I think I still have my old unit up in the dusty old loft.
I shall have to display its charms on the old bay of pigs maybe .

Either that or shoot it up with an air rifle

[Barry]

Hmm. SP25 Mk.III with an SME? Has it been tried I wonder? Possibly. All sorts of 'horrors' crop up in Hi-Fi! (using the term loosely :))

I think the phrase was "a Garrard deck", so I assume Mark meant either a Garrard 301 or a 401.

Recognising that the most valuable part of my system were the records themselves, within a year of acquiring a Garrard SP25 it was replaced with an SME arm mounted on a Collaro 2010 TT (a "poor man's" 301) with a Shure M55E (the latter being a noticable improvement over the Shure M3D).

[Vinyl turner]

I think the phrase was "a Garrard deck", so I assume Mark meant either a Garrard 301 or a 401.

Recognising that the most valuable part of my system were the records themselves, within a year of acquiring a Garrard SP25 it was replaced with an SME arm mounted on a Collaro 2010 TT (a "poor man's" 301) with a Shure M55E (the latter being a noticable improvement over the Shure M3D).

I didn't expand on that bit did I ?

Yes, the older guys obviously meant the veritable 301 or 401, which I was blissfully unaware of at the time. I saw a Garrard deck for sale, at a cheap price and figured it must have been what they were talking about :scratch:

I figured it out some years later, much later.

[walpurgis]

Ah. You repeated my SP25 piccie, so I assumed that was what you were getting at. :)

But I still bet some chump somewhere has tried to fit an SME on one. And if it's a member here, well, you're still a chump! :lol:

[dowser]

First was some unknown 3 in 1 system upgraded by some huge tower Amstrad loudspeakers (my Dad worked at Curry’s service department - their loudspeakers were free :)) - I had the speakers either side of my bed by my head, pointed in like headphones - spent many an evening floating around the house to that :)

Then a high end Aiwa midi system, then a Q-Deck, Nad 3130 & Mission 737-Rs.

[Macca]

1984 - One of these things borrowed off of my mother:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22264&d=1514295821

Then, in 1985, a Saturday job meant I could afford one of these (except it was an Aiwa not a Matsui):

http://theartofsound.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22265&d=1514295859

Which was, although still utterly crap, a massive step up from the Murphy. It was stereo!

Then I became a poxy student and discovered Richer Sounds. So in the Summer of '88 bought these Fisher amp and speakers:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22267&d=1514296644

http://theartofsound.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22266&d=1514296512

And a Tensai Turntable:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=22268&d=1514296817

The amp was a bit more flash than the one pictured, but same basic idea. That lot cost £50 less than the Aiwa midi system but danced on its grave.

Then I started hanging around with postgrads who already had cd players and NICAM VCRS and were into building their own speakers and subs using exotic drivers like Jordan and Bandor. That opened my eyes and I have only them to blame for where I am now

[Macca]

Just remembered my Aunty bought the Aiwa midi system off me for £70 as an Xmas pressie for one of my cousins, who was about 5 years younger than me.

Then sold the Tensai to one of my brothers, who ran it for years and years and I got a bin-end Kenwood Linear Tracker from Richer for a hundred quid. Loved that deck and stupidly sold it for fifty quid to mate who couldn't believe his luck. Of course I was skint at the time I but should have just starved for a couple of weeks instead.

[Edward]

Whilst at boarding school in early 70s my lowest lofi system consisted of a cheap transistor radio playing Radio Caroline through a mono earphone plug stripped back and playing into a plain speaker someone had going spare. Bliss.

[Minstrel SE]

I had a mono portable cassette player..... cant remember the timeline if I had cassettes before any vinyl

Van der Molen with BSR deck and built in amp with slide pot controls...around 1975. Started failing quickly and the BSR deck was rickety but I had fun with it

A Sharp GF1704 radio cassette player. I linked the two..... what a system! With the Leds glowing at night I was in business :)

Then in 1980 I started begging and saving for a Sharp stack sytem matching the SM30 amplifier, Tuner, RT30 cassette deck. RT31 turntable (gutted that the RT30 had been discontinued when I had been saving :D) Many of the local TV shops had Sharp catalogues and there was a big Sharp warehouse in Manchester. I bought it bit by bit and the mark ups were horrendous. I think of Sharp as the poor mans JVC, Pioneer or Marantz but it wasnt bad for what it was. It lasted 28 years around the family.

I could have done much better for the price I paid. I even bought the matching rack with glass door and it was well over £400 all in. I got all glossy eyed for the matching silver components. I didnt know anything then and I hadnt even heard of Rega. My world was if dad took me to Comet at the weekend

I got bored of it when I first picked up Hi Fi Answers and saw a whole new world of esoteric components. A glorious world of the LP12 and Regas in a source first system

I soon got the upgrade bug and I had a Rega, Creek & Monitor Audios when Macca was just starting out :)

The funny thing is the internet allowed me to download good pictures of all my first equipment. There is a nagging feeling that I had my best musical moments with all the stuff in my youth.

[Roy S]

43 years ago

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180103/58bfcf696293c47fd8536cbe08926973.jpg

[walpurgis]

Circa 1972/1973, I got my first proper Hi-Fi.

http://i63.tinypic.com/10ydj82.jpg

[OD1]

one of these was my pride and joy at time

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/BXFH7M/technics-cassette-recorder-philips-netherlands-circa-1965-1960s-60s-BXFH7M.jpg

Ahh brings back memories :)
I got mine for Xmas in the 70's, the first record I recorded on it was Make a Daft Noise for Xmas by the Goodies (I now have a tear in my eye)

[Barry]

Circa 1972/1973, I got my first proper Hi-Fi.

http://i63.tinypic.com/10ydj82.jpg

Is that the Neat G30 arm or the A+D arm? What is the cartridge?

Love the 'laboratory chic' of the Ferrograph amp.

[walpurgis]

Is that the Neat G30 arm or the A+D arm? What is the cartridge?

Love the 'laboratory chic' of the Ferrograph amp.

Neat arm if I recall. The F307 was troublesome, as was the one supplied as a replacement. Disappointing.

[Vinyl turner]

Ahh brings back memories :)
I got mine for Xmas in the 70's, the first record I recorded on it was Make a Daft Noise for Xmas by the Goodies (I now have a tear in my eye)

Not 'arf !

I had something similar that came as a early 70s Christmas present. I recorded most of the charts at the time & things like " The cat crept in, crapped & crept out again " (maybe not entirely the correct title) would have been played to death.