Where did it all start for you? The music and hi-fi thing I mean.

Something Marco wrote in another thread set me to thinking:

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Originally Posted by Marco

Howard Jones, The Thompson Twins... Now we're talking my kinda music from my era! :smoking:

Feck yer 70s rock and prog rock bollocks :eyebrows:

I'm very much an 80s boy at heart - all the other stuff I listen to is just 'froth' ;)

Enjoy your new deck, Steve - it sounds like a cracker!

Marco.

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Everyone says hello when they arrive, and a quick run-through of what they own and listen to now. but I think some of the really interesting stories are about what's got us to this point; where did the hi-fi and music thing start for everyone and where has it taken them along the way, because mine started about 24 years ago and it's not over yet.

I think it would be interesting to hear people's musical autobiographies, if people have got the time and inclination to share...

I'm working on mine at the moment and I'll post once I'm finished.

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Originally Posted by twelvebears

Everyone says hello when they arrive, and a quick run-through of what they own and listen to now. but I think some of the really interesting stories are about what's got us to this point; where did the hi-fi and music thing start for everyone and where has it taken them along the way, because mine started about 24 years ago and it's not over yet.

I think it would be interesting to hear people's musical autobiographies, if people have got the time and inclination to share...

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Great idea - Standing by!!

Here's the tale of how i became interested in audio.
It's not a diary of upgrades, because i can't remember half of them. I'll leave that to those who can.:)

1972, this 14 year old country boy wandered across the road to his nearest neighbour. The neighbour- a retired engineer- was always taking something apart or just messing with something interesting. Fascinating stuff for a young lad.
On this occasion he was lifting some furniture from the house, and he announced that he was making room for a stereo system. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but one of my mates had a modern record player, like a suitcase with speakers in the lid, so I guessed it was something similar.

Apparently he had to travel some fifty odd miles to Bolton, in order to collect whatever it was. That was the nearest proper HiFi dealer. He asked me if I wanted to go along for the ride, but then quickly changed his mind, saying there might not be enough room in the car.
I felt disappointed. Not enough room in the car! What the hell was he buying that would fill a Morris Marina Coupe?
He gave me a copy of Popular Hifi to look at. I took it home and must have read the thing from cover to cover several times, slowly realising there was something going on that I knew nothing about.

I mentioned this to my Father, who then announced that his friend at work had just bought one.
Dad had no real interest in playing music, or the money to buy a system with. However, he thought such things were a better investment than the rubbish I had previously wasted money on. He was referring to Scalextric sets and other teen toys I had accumulated, but seldom used.
He suggested I sell some stuff to raise the cash for some stereo bits and pieces. Other than that, I would have to wait till Christmas. Remember the good old days, when folks didn't get everything they wanted straight away.

Meanwhile across the road, my neighbour had been to Bolton and returned with his stereo. I got the invite that night to go and see it.
There was a new shelf unit with a turntable, amplifier and tuner. He pointed out some new and rather large items of furniture that were apparently speakers. I remember the backs came off quite easily, and inside there were two drive units one of which had Richard Allan written on it. What he had was a Thorens/Leak/Richard Allen system.
He didn't have much in the way of LPs to play on it, but we sat in awe as we listened to trains going from side to side along with other sound effects.

Later I went home to find out from my Popular HiFi, just how much this would have cost. It was way beyond my reach, so I started looking for something I could afford.

Soon after I got invited to see the system belonging to my dads friend. I recognised the turntable as another Thorens, but the amp was a strange looking thing with orange dials and buttons. I could see no speakers anywhere, until he showed me some large flat panels about twelve inches from the wall. I've no idea what they were but the hidden drive units pointed toward the back wall at an angle.
He had made them himself, and they seemed much better than the Richard Allans. I had to listen to an hour of classical music, which wasn't what I had in mind, but it was clear that these systems were an obvious step up in sound quality. At least from the stereogram and suitcase type things.

Well the Scalextric got sold, along with some other stuff and I raised sufficient cash to buy the cheapest available turntable and amplifier. (Garrard 2025TC and Amstrad 8000). I couldn't afford to buy any speakers, but my dad who was impressed by my fundraising efforts, offered to pay for some Elac full range drive units from Wilmslow Audio, if I built some boxes.
Well it wasn't really HIFI, but better than anything my mates had.

The next thirty odd years is a saga of box swapping and mistakes and speaker building, just like most other people, so I won't even bother trying to remember what I bought or in which order.

Great story that. My Hacker record player had a 2025TC, fitted with Acos GP96 cartridge. Why they didn't fit the far better 104 escapes me, unless the 104 came much later. I also tried the Sonotone 3559/Garrard KS41C and these were great too in this player.

I've had music in my life ever since I could breathe. The Deccalian 88 with Collaro Conquest changer was in constant use, as was the Bush table radio we had, tuned to the "light" programme, which played a mixture of puff, as well as some of the "hit-parade" tunes of the late fifties/early sixties.

I like all sorts of music and can now play T Rex and Slade alongside Led Zep, Yes and ELP. it just depends on mood. Alongside "Meddle" by PF and Led Zep IV, I also bought "Bridge over Troubled Water" and Beethoven's 6th and enjoy them all to this day.

Well frankly, given both the music and hi-fi kit I was exposed to has a kid, it's amazing that I have any love or appreciation of either!

Although I was born in 1971, and therefore in an ideal position to be weaned on some of the classic rock, pop and Motown acts of the 60's and 70's, I had two slight disadvantages:

1. Money was pretty tight growing up, and so neither buying music, nor the kit to play it on featured very high on my
parent's list of priorities.

2. Even though I'm an only child, both my parents where in their 40's when I was born (much to everyone's surprise,
especially theirs!) and as a result, their generation and particular taste in music left something to be desired.

Typical listening would often include:

James Last

Perry Como

Great Western Themes (actually not that bad)

Shirley Bassey

Joe Loss

Various awful K-Tel compilation albums

However, despite the above, an interest developed because of two important things:

I became aware that music existed outside the home, not all of which made you want to kill yourself because some old cardigan-wearing American was singing about trees, ribbons and what he wanted to do with a hatchet, hammer and bucket of bloody nails!

I inherited a fundamentally interest in how and why things worked, and was therefore very interested in all things hi-fi, which at the time meant turntables, tape decks and stuff with lights and buttons.

The next big big step, and one which really ignited everything that came after, was a very important present from my Godparents (same age group, same awful choice of music, slightly more money) for Xmas 1982.... A wonderful, wonderful Sony Walkman, Specifically one of these, a WM-5 and my first album.

This was, a fantastic piece of kit, and cutting edge at the time, with awesome sound quality (to my young ears) and build which made all my friend's players (mostly cheap Sanyo units) look and sound like total cack.

Given the aforementioned dire taste in music, you be wondering what horrible, horrible selection was given along with this life-changing present. Well here, for some reason, the music gods intervened and by some miracle, I got the genuinely excellent Oxygene and listened to it over and over again. My love of music was given another big boost by my own first purchase, which is one that am proud to have as 'my first album'. A reasonably successful second album, released just before Xmas that year by a well know and sadly, recently deceased American chap. (see I knew they didn't all wear cardigans!!).

It was at this point that the hi-fi bit kicked in.

As mentioned, the WM-5 was actually a damn fine piece of kit, and it became immediately obviously to be that the sounds it was delivering to my grateful ears when playing the same tape as my Dad's woeful Pye music centre, differed so much as to be almost beyond belief! What had happened to Mr Jackson?!! Why was Mr Van Halen playing his mind-bending guitar solo from under a duvet?!! This would never do, something had to change and fast!

Fortunately this was back in 1983, when the internet was a research project, Amazon was somewhere with trees, and small independent hi-fi shops could still be profitable and be places of magic and wonder to a newly music-obsessed 11 year old, and just across the road from my street was S.M. Electronics, licensed to sell wondrous, early 80s separates from the likes of Marantz, Pioneer, Sony and Toshiba!

Now this would have been unbearable and pointless torture, given the VAST gap between the price tags and the combined sum of my pocket and paper-round money, were it not for the even more 80s phenomenon of S.M. Electronics very own hi-fi repair shop 3 doors up. Where because of a very kind, understanding and trusting owner, a deal was struck which saw me buying various bits of repaired but uncollected hi-fi with weekly instalments.

The next few years, combined with increasingly well paid teenage jobs, my Mum's Brian Mills catalogue and the newly opened Richer Sounds, saw me build a fully fledged system with a Sony turntable, Panasonic cassette deck, Marantz amp and 3-way Sharp speakers (in real wood cabinets!), along with a decent selection of typically 80's music. I loved my system, and although I'm sure it actually sounded pretty bad, it sounded way better than the portable stereos my fellow teenage friends owned, and I was very happy until one day in 1986 when I happened to drop in at my friend Alex's house on the way home from school....

Depeche Mode

Black Celebration

A top-of-the-range Sony 'midi' system - 100 watts per channel!!

A CD PLAYER!!

It was the most amazing sound I'd ever heard, and the album was great too. To this day, the opening notes of the first track and the way the bass-line kicks in still brings the memory of that first time flooding back. So of course I rushed home, hell-bent on BEGGING my Mum to let buy the one (vaguely) affordable CD player from her Brian Mills catalogue. After just over a week, the AWESOME and massively expensive (to me - £299.99) Akai CD-A30 arrived!

Of course at this time, in the mid-80s,to a 15yr old on just double paper-round and pocket money, the weekly payments on the CD player (god knows what I actually ended up paying including interest, I shudder to think) meant that CDs were a major expense and required serious consideration. Back then, most discs were approx £15 WHICH IS £33.45 IN TODAYS MONEY!! Seriously, imagine EVERY album you bought now costing over £30!! No wonder I can still remember most of the tiles of my early collection:

Can't Slow Down - Lionel Richie
Human Racing - Nick Kershaw
Black Celebration - Depeche Mode
Word Up - Cameo
Genesis - Genesis
Greatest Hits - Queen
Suddenly - Billy Ocean
Graceland - Paul Simon
Thriller & Off The Wall - Michael Jackson

Anyway, that's it for now, the next part of the story will pick up a few years down the line when I have my first job and close friend who has joined me in reading Hi-Fi News & Record Review and Hi-Fi Choice from cover to cover each month, and who has also got a serious case of 'Upgradeitus'

This is a fantastic thread! Great idea Steve!

Such great and heart-warming stories. I really hope some of today's kids will get into better quality music better reproduced.

My first record player (thanks to Green Shield Stamps in my case) was a Dansette Popular

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q...ttepopular.jpg

Sadly, the speaker was on the top, between the platter and the arm. The thing ran slightly slow and I tended to fiddle too much. The local repair shop almost refused to have it back after the third or fourth time.........

Once I'd turned 10, another local shop gave me some old record players to play with and I was off, nearly electrocuting myself as I went along (all those valves and high heater currents..). I learned all about the BSR "Monarch" changer units and the earlier Garrards pre the "Auto-Slim," which spawned the 2025TC and most of the legendary SP25 series.

My first "proper" HiFi consisted of a GL75/M75-EJ, Lustraphone LP100 amp and Audiomaster Image 2 speakers. In 1976 I discovered proper valves (Radford STA25 with pre and a full Quad valve setup with both tuners) and bought the BC1's, which I kept for a few years until I got into the "Dinn/Laim" thang, starting with an LP12/G707/ADC ZLM,NAC12/CB160 and 'briks.........

There was of course the time when, aged about 14 I electrocuted myself while removing the casing of an old Sony amp while it was still plugged in...

Yes I know it was stupid, it was an accident OK! :)

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Originally Posted by twelvebears

There was of course the time when, aged about 14 I electrocuted myself while removing the casing of an old Sony amp while it was still plugged in...

Yes I know it was stupid, it was an accident OK! :)

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I think we have all done that at least once (some however only do it once), in my case it was a Pathos In-Power power amplifier. I was changing the fuse and despite the fact it was off, I had not unplugged it from the wall..........:doh::doh::doh:stupid. My wife wondered why I was rolling about the floor in agony.:(



Regards D S D L

Excellent! Well done Neil! :)

My was pretty spectatular. I was holding each side of the u-shaped metal casing with both hands and the shock caused both hands to grip the case so hard that the metal edge sliced straight into both hands at the same time.

There was blood

There was swearing

There was me looking like a complete tit at school having to explain my both my hands were in bandages.

However I haven't zapped myself since.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twelvebears

Excellent! Well done Neil! :)

My was pretty spectatular. I was holding each side of the u-shaped metal casing with both hands and the shock caused both hands to grip the case so hard that the metal edge sliced straight into both hands at the same time.

There was blood

There was swearing

There was me looking like a complete tit at school having to explain my both my hands were in bandages.

However I haven't zapped myself since.

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No blood in my case, some swearing, and a lot of hand rubbing to try and get the sensation back into it. The finger tips were particularly sore.

I once got blown across a patio, faulty cable inside a drill which I had been using via a wire brush attachment to remove rust from patio furniture. That was bad, blackened fingers and a heart that had launched into orbit, or so it felt. I lay thinking I was dead (sure give away I wasn't, assuming theres no thinking after death;)), would not want to experience that again.


Regards D S D L

I grew up in Sarf Lundon and lived just off Lavender Hill. In 1966 I ventured into an alladin's cave of all things Vinyl, a shop called the "Slipped Disc". It had racks and racks of 45s, most of which had large holes in the middle. I later found out that that was because they were American Imports (you had to have a "Spider" to use it in the U.K). My first two 45s were Sittin on The Dock of The Bay, Otis Redding and Soul Man, Sam & Dave on the Blue Stax label (about the only 45s I still have)

We had an old HMV Radiogram which was housed in a very fine piece of furniture. I would love to know now if it was a valve amp in it, but it was binned many years ago.

My sister was 3 years older than me. Initially we only owned the top of the house and our lounge was at the front of the house, overlooking the street. My sister used to get her friends out in the street and I would open the windows and push the 'gram up to the winodws and I would be "the record man" (later to be known as a DJ of course). I would turn the thing up full blast and sister and friends would dance in the street (quite literally) to early Motown stuff that she was into.

The Motown and Soul sounds were all I wanted to hear and progressed to the legendary Stax "This Is Soul" album and on to all manner of Soul, Funk, Jazz-Funk etc. I was always taken by the immediacy and brutality of Disco systems. I started work at 17 and scraped enough money together to buy a "Disco" set up. When I think now how bad it was it is laughable, but it went LOOUUDD! and that was all that mattered.

My bedroom system consisted of an Eagle 15w per channel amp and a Garrard SP25Mk11. Speakers were quite unusual. At the time I was working in Knightsbridge and the Kings Road was only a jump away. B&O systems were often teamed with Large Spherical white speakers made by a company called Sykes and Hirsch (US I think) they were like large footballs. An old friend at school whose family had pots of money were constantly up-grading his hifi, and he sold them to me. Sounded quite good, but could not take much power.

My dad was then offered a Pye valve amp and some large home-made speakers. I inherited the speakers after I got married and parents moved to a smaller house. Turns out they had Goodmans Axiom units in them. I sold them years ago before I knew what call there was for the Axiom drive units.

My first serious amp was an Audiolab 8000A. I didn't buy a CD player unit about 1992 a Phillips 610MK11. Brilliant player that only died this year. Speakers were Wharfedale Diamonds, Mission 760MK11s, and a gang of others before making my own horns in 2006.

Ahhh, memories, memories. Like so many on here my parent's taste in music was... shall we say non-existant? The had a few James Last LPs, a number of Readers Digest boxed sets and the odd film theme. Oh, and a motley collection of 45s that ranged from the sublime (Space Oddity) to the ridiculous (New Seekers).

We played these on high days & holidays, occasionally listening to radio as well. Now, about the same time I got bought a Sharp boom-box for Christmas, and mounted it on the shelf above my desk, listening to Radio 1 as I whiled away the hours building Airfix kits. The proximity of speakers with perfect stereo positioning, allied with copious amounts of noxious glue (looking back I was always slightly zonked when making kits :mental:) made me all too aware that there was a world of stereo out there.

So I started reading up. I'd hang around Laskeys hi-fi department, hoping to get a play on some kit - it made a welcome change from spending a couple of hours typing a program into their ZX-81 only to find it did something crappy like make 'Hello' bounce round the screen. I ventured upstairs in our local photographic shop, discovering a cornucopia of champagne-coloured separates. I stole my brother's albums - mainly Mike Oldfield, Jean-Michelle Jarre and some band called Pink Floyd, who'd had that funny song out that they banned us from singing at school. Sumfink abaht educashyun.

I took a keen interest in setting up Mum & Dads system better - it too was a Garrard SP25 with an Eagle receiver, mated to some Pye speakers if memory serves. It was crap. But it was still HiFi!! Sitting between the speakers, lifted up off their normal home on the floor on temporary piles of books, I could detect the hint of stereo imaging and detail as I played my ever growing album collection - Nik Kershaw, Visage, Howard Jones... (I was a new romantic at heart although far too scared to wear the clothing or makeup).

One day I was hanging around outside a scary 'proper' hifi shop in Chichester, when the owner beckoned me in, telling me it was fine to have a look around and he didn't bite. He was playing some folk music by a guy called Christy Moore. It was a Rega Planar 3 through a Creek amp and Royd speakers - I'd never heard the like. To me, he was there. I went straight round to Our Price and bought the album (Ride On - still ace!)

Eventually I convinced Mum & Dad that they should get with it, and after much to-ing and fro-ing they bought a new system - a NAD 3130 and a pair of Heybrook HB1s. I saved like mad and bought a new turntable - a Dual 505 Deluxe, no less. I can remember clearly taking the train to London, all of 14 years old, and buying it in a hifi shop somewhere in the Mecca that is Tottenham Court Road, and having to walk back from there to Victoria as I'd blown my spare cash on a record cleaner.

I used to race RC buggies as a hobby, and my friend John (who was about 40, but my Mum & Dad didn't mind - social services would have a field day now!!) had a - all bow down - Linn system. LP12, LK1&2, Index speakers. Wow... this was the pinnacle. I vowed to have my own Linn one day...

It's been a slippery slope ever since, but I guess I've always been chasing after that feeling you get when the room around you disappears and all you're left with is the music. Funny how things come round though - I'm back to using the amp my M & D bought all those years ago.

Jason

We didn't have a record player till I was 10, and I didn't own any records till I was 12, but we used to listen to the the likes of The Stones, Them, and early blues stuff round at my cousin's, who had a) his own room and b) his own record player.

We pestered our parents till they bought a Fidelity multi-changer record player, plus a tape recorder so we could tape 'Pick of the Pops' off the radio.

Then my sister got a 'stereo' (ie a music centre plus two speakers) for her 18th birthday and I was hooked, listening to Hendrix, Who, John Mayall and Fleetwood Mac, lying on the sitting room floor with a speaker either side of my head.

My own first record player was a few years coming, but I started off with a Rotel (badged, appropriately enough 'Rank') stereo plus BSR turntable bought from Curry's with holiday work earnings. Once I got a 'proper job' I bought a Goodman's tuner/amp and RB35 speakers from Comet in Bexleyheath- well OTT for the tiny bedsit in Greenwich where I lived in at the time.

The rest is (slightly blurred) history.

Really fantastic posts people. Thank you. It's great to read this stuff!

I like to think that my parents - my dad at least (sorry mum) - had great music taste, and a passion for Hi-Fi and audio DIY and that helped get me on the straight and narrow at an early age. My dad bought his main source, a Garrard 301 in 1969, and built a tonearm out of balsa for it. It was mounted in a wide, low, cabinet that some might call a radiogram, that he'd made himself. The pre and poweramp were also home-made. And a Heathkit tuner, homemade again obviously. The speakers were big 2 foot by 4 foot home-made things that were to go to my school when they were retired in the mid-80s. That was our system til the early 80's when the radiogram was broken for scrap and my dad built a new system in an 'upright' configuration, new power-amp and passive switching system, and homemade KEF cabs pretty much identical to the ones I am using now, which we made together when I was about 16.

I made my initial entrance in February of 1973, but that didn't appear to distract my dad who made some of his best vinyl purchases in that year. Dark Side Of The Moon, the Suck It And See Vertigo double-LP comp, and Together, a fantastic compilation of CBS stuff which to this day is one of the most influential albums on my musical upbringing, ever. I now have 2 copies of my own. Lovely blue vinyl :)

My first musical memory was from 1979 - 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' by Ian Dury & The Blockheads. I must have heard this on the radio because my folks didn't have it. Around this point I started getting into some of the other stuff my parents listened to. Sky, and Pink Floyd (Dark Side - my dad didn't have any others by them). I would dance round the living room playing air-guitar to Sky 2. I still have a strong soft-spot for Kevin Peek and Co.

Sometime in the early 80's - probably around age 10, I was given a Tandy cassette recorder. A mono thing probably designed to play computer tapes into an early home computer. I used this to record theme tunes off TV, and to archive episodes of Knight Rider, The Whizz Kids, Airwolf and The A-Team in the years before VCR! In 1984 I spent my birthday money on my first album, on cassette, to be played in my Tandy tape recorder. It was Synchronicity by The Police, and I got that one because a friend at school played 'Walking On The Moon' in a class once, and I thought it was a great tune. It was perhaps a shame it wasn't on the album I'd just bought, but I played it death anyway! That tape would eventually be lost leaping over a mountain stream in the Pennines wearing my walkman (sans dodgy door) c. 1989!

That album was to be the only one I owned for 2 years. In early 1986 I must have spent my Christmas money on Now... That's What I Call Music 6. Not quite as essential as my earlier purchase, it was to last me another year or so, as I was rapidly developing my own sense of musical identity.

I'd also decided it was about time that I had a better system than the Tandy tape deck I'd been using. It must have been my 13th birthday, or maybe the slightly earlier in Christmas of 1984, that I was given my first proper bit of music making equipment. It was a Sanyo 'ghetto-blaster' with a 5 band EQ, single tape well, radio, AUX-in / out and detachable speakers. This would last me 4 or 5 years.

In late 1987 I woke up to the sounds of indie-pop. I fell in love with Bjork, who was getting airplay on The Chart Show Indie Top 10 with The Sugarcubes. Birthday is a fantastic single to this day. I bought their album in early 1988, along with ones by The House Of Love, My Bloody Valentine, Pop Will Eat Itself. I bought my first vinyl records... Wild Hearted Woman by All About Eve (my first 12", along with Def Con One - Doomsday Powermix limited promo 12" by PWEI both bargain bin purchases for 50p each from Sounds Around in Kidderminster :)) and 'You Make Me Feel' by The Woodentops, my first 7". I didn't have a turntable so they would be surreptitiously played on my dad's Garrard, and copied to tape. He hated me playing 'high groove modulation' 12" 45's on his deck because he was worried about the stylus!.

I would stay up until 10 or 11 at night to tape John Peel and edit the best tracks down onto a stack of C90's most of which I still have to this day. In early '89 I pursuaded my dad to help me beef up my system. We built a pair of KEF-driven speakers and he made a 100W 4 mosfet power-amp to be driven by my Sanyo ghetto blaster. Bypassing the horrible detachable speakers made a world of difference. My system was already miles better than that of my mates. My dad had bought the Sanyo wisely - it may have been a ghetto blaster but it was a good machine and more importantly it was upgradeable. In late 1989 I augmented it with my dad's Sony component tape deck which was only ever being used by me anyway by this point!

The Shamen, Fields Of The Nephilim, Ultra Vivid Scene, Dinosaur Jnr, The Pixies, Ozric Tentacles, The Wonderstuff... through Peel, Wired and Snub I was discovering a whole world of music. I tried my hand at Goth, but unlike today where every 15 or 16 year old looks like a teenie Goth, I was a little more unusual. And I didn't do it very well. I'd do my eye make up at a friends, then get bollocked by my parents when I got home in case the neighbours thought I was (how can I put it) a lady boy or something :lol:

So I just grew a bowl haircut like Guy Chambers from House Of Love.

In 1990 all my mates caught up with me and wanted to borrow the music they'd scorned me for for the last 2 years. That was a fun time. And we started to go to gigs. The Wedding Present, PWEI, Wonderstuff, local bands (I lived 6 miles from Stourbridge and the Stourbridge scene was massive).

Through the next few years I was in university; no money for gear, but lots of tapes being swapped with friends, lots of time spent going to gigs (I was in London, so I was out probably once a week seeing bands). I spent a lot of my time helping out with a great band called The Muscle Shoal, who definitely should have been big.

I seem to remember I had the Sony tape deck through most of this time. Augmented with a JVC tape deck of the 'no door' open-loading design at one point. My VCR was a Phillips V2000 at this point so retro was definitely cool.

I was unemployed for around a year after university and then in temporary / low paid work for the year or two after that so it was only in my mid-twenties that I had the wherewithall to improve my system. I bought my first CDP around this time off an old school friend. A Technics SL-PG520A which I still have. It was a basic machine, but had lots of stuff I liked, like the jog-wheel and peak-search. I replaced the Sony and the Sanyo (:)) with an Aiwa ADF-450 from Richer Sounds. Later this was augmented with a Sony TL-K515S deck (HX-PRO, Dolby S - nice!). By 1999 I'd also adopted Minidisc. In retrospect I wish I'd got into DAT at that stage, but at the time it was out of my price range. I made do with a Sony MDS-JE500 standalone machine and a Sony MZ-R50 portable. Around 2001 I did make the move to DAT, with a Tascam DA-20 MKII which I still have, and around 2003 I got myself a Tascam recordable CDP, a CDR-3000 if I remember correctly. That died after a year - very disappointing.

I also 'upgraded' my amp... I say 'upgraded' because all I was doing was swapping a well-made DIY amp for a mid-range pre-built one. A Harman/Kardon HK1400. The Harmon/Kardon sounds nice I think. My current Quad sounds more natural while the HK was perhaps a bit more obvious, but it was a nice amp which lasted a long time. I've got it saved for a second system some time! The speakers were still the same KEF-based ones I'd had since I was 16.

In my late 20's I bought and passed on a load of gear. Home cinema stuff that just took up room with loads of speakers, to no real benefit, alongside my existing 2-channel set up. I bought my first turntable - a ProJect Debut (Mk I) turntable which was always disappointing TBH. Rumble and surface noise were terrible with it! It really put me off vinyl for a long time.

For a few years though I was spending around £50 a week at the local record store. By this time I'd moved to Bristol and was a regular at Imperial Music on Park Street. They were an amazing shop, very friendly, great selection of new and old releases, imports, vinyl and CD. I got into Ninja Tune, City Centre Offices, Morr Music, VVM Test, Leaf, Skintone, Major Force and all manner of obscure electronica, avant-garde and 'ill-shit' that they were apt to recommend with their little yellow post-it notes attached to the new releases.

For a couple of years I maybe single-handedly kept them afloat. In the end their rent doubled and they folded. And with it another chapter of Bristol's independent record shop history, as Replay would follow about a year later.

Alongide this passion for modern electronica, I was utilising the 'net and CD101.com to build my Canterbury and Byrds collections. That's maybe another chapter of my story, cos for the timebeing I think this installment has gone on long enough! I'll save the rest for later ;)

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Originally Posted by Beechwoods

By this time I'd moved to Bristol and was a regular at Imperial Music on Park Street.

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Ah, Imperial. Quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen was an elderly couple who'd wandered into Imperial asking the pierced/tattooed/dreadlocked youth behind the counter if he had any Mozart in stock. He very kindly directed them to the (now also defunct) Bristol Classical Music shop down in the Centre.

Replay by the bus station was also great - the later one on Park Street wasn't a patch on it. And I miss the Music Gear Exchange in Bath. They always had really interesting kit there, reel to reels and the like :eyebrows: though it never looked like any of their stock shifted. Maybe that was the problem!

This thread is great!!!!

Here's my contribution...........

My first exposure to recorded music came with one of these:
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1215/bushmonarch4.jpg

A Bush ‘Monarch’ – 4 speed autochanger with built-in speaker.

My parents took music seriously, & we lived overseas quite a bit, in places where you had to make your own entertainment, so there was always music around the house. Their taste was almost exclusively classical but with a little Brubeck, Modern Jazz Quartet & Errol Garner thrown in for good measure.

Later, my old man got a Sony reel to reel, then a Garrard SP25, Marantz AU 505 & some Wharfedale speakers were bought back in the UK to keep us entertained during an imminent 2 year spell in Central Africa. As the only family with a hi-fi in a close knit community of British, German & Yugoslavian expats , we used to hold musical appreciation evenings, oiled by G&T's, imported Scotch & local Lion Lager. Then, one Christmas back in UK, I & my sisters got a Van der Molen TT with built-in amp & some no-name speakers. That was when I started buying records for myself in anger. My first single was Black Night by Deep Purple. The first album I knew all the lyrics to was Ziggy Stardust.

I bought & devoured albums by Dylan, Yes, Genesis, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin – all that stuff. Later, I hated most of what was released in the 80’s. I learnt to recognise and admire the art of the great 3 minute pop single, but bought hardly any of them! By the time I was 15 or 16, all my money went on albums – I used to hitch-hike the 12 miles to Brighton & trail around the 2nd hand record shops (of which there were a lot!), buying everything of interest that I could afford.

When I got into hi-fi properly for myself, my musical taste exploded & I found myself buying all sorts of stuff that I had previously not known existed or had discounted as ‘not for me’.

My first separates were the ubiquitous SP25, Sharp cassette deck, a Sony amp (which I still own) & Wharfedale Lintons (?). Later, came some AR speakers (shop soiled from Lasky’s in Brighton). When I started working as a pre-college industrial student for the Forestry Commission, I went on a 3 week training course & spent my subsistence money (£33 a day on top of normal wages) on an AR TT with Linn LVX/Basik, Cyrus 2 & B&W DM101’s. I was earning a lot of money for a 19 year old & living in the middle of nowhere in Devon, with nowhere to spend it, so once a month, on weekends home, I’d get back round the vinyl emporia & also the new record shops & set-to, expanding my collection. By this time, I was getting into Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderley, BB King, The Grateful Dead and more. The Zappa collection was already about 30 albums strong!!

That all seems like a lifetime ago…………..

Well, I hope you will indulge me the pleasure of my reminiscing – actually, you haven't got any choice if I post it, only if you want to read it! So here goes...

Well, I must have been around 11, so therefore it would have been about 1980, and my best friend Mark's uncle had recently moved into a new house and was busy doing the DIY as you do. He needed to break up the concrete drive (for some reason) and Mark and I were doing our Bob-A-Job for the Scouts, and were duly put to work with lump hammers and cold-chisels on the “chain gang” to break up the drive! I remember “Uncle Tim” from when he had stayed with Mark's family a few years before, and his amazing hi-fi boxes all piled up in the front room he was staying in. Well, his new home was no different, and after we had finished our sentence of hard labour and filled in our little book, Uncle Tim demonstrated his hi-fi. My Mum and Dad had a Ferguson “sound system” - and I remember giggling at “Donovan's Intergalactic Laxative” and humming along to “A Night At The Opera”, but music had never sounded like THIS! I have no idea what the system was, but I loved it!

I started to get into music, my first album being “Anthem” by “Toyah”, and I was soon hankering after a midi system from Rumbelows. I guess I was about 15 by the time I has saved up enough to buy my Sharp system, and although I loved it, it never sounded that great, despite the 2 extra sets of speakers I bought from jumble sales and wired in! My best friend Mark was obsessed with Blondie – well, probably more with Debbie Harry, but what's a teenage boy to think?! Sadly, on the weekend of his 18th Birthday party, Mark was killed in a motorcycle crash, and as you can imagine, for a 17 year old who had been like his brother for 10 years I was devastated. A while later, Mark's Mum and Dad asked if I would like the old hi-fi that Mark had, which had been passed down from Uncle Tim. Of course, I was very pleased to have it. The years passed, and the old hi-fi gradually expired bit by bit – first the Rogers tuner, then the Akai Cassette deck, and eventually the Rogers (solid state – don't panic!) amplifier. A trip or two to the repair shops ensued, but eventually the days came when they had completely given up the ghost. The only thing I had left was the Turntable. As my income increased, so I started to acquire my own separates system, but the turntable always seemed to soldier on. I always knew it was a pretty good turntable, but it was very bulky, and domestic bliss ensured that it was eventually retired to the loft and replaced by a non-descript Technics player.

Well “domestic bliss” was never destined to happen with wife number 1, and about 10 years ago I found myself a bachelor again, and with all my goods and chattels in tow I rediscovered the big old beast – I did a bit of research, and apparently a Garrard 401 with an SME 3009 (Improved) tonearm and a Shure V15 cartridge is quite a respectable bit of kit! Part of the reason for joining this forum is my desire to sympathetically resurrect the Garrard, and build a fitting tribute to my best mate, his Dad Hugh and Uncle Tim – all of whom sadly gone, but had a huge influence on my life, and my love of music reproduction.

Sorry this has dragged on, but you did ask, and as it's Friday night, a rather nice Tempranillo has helped oil the wheels!

My first real taste of hi-fi started with a Linsley-Hood 75W amplifier kit from Powertran (the circuit can still be referenced in Wireless World but the company is, sadly, long gone), together with Cambridge R40 speakers, a Connoisseur BD1 turntable and SME3009-II pickup arm. The SME experienced a variety of cartridges from Goldring, Shure, Ortofon, Empire and Dynavector, the latter being my very first moving coil type.

Of course, there were many pre-hi-fi configurations, including some madness with redesigning the amps inside a Dansette music centre (yes, the records really did stack and drop), experiments with a JVC 8-track receiver (da-di-da, k-lunk, di-da), Wharfedale Chevins with the single 8" dual-concentric driver and some truly awful amp modules by a company best forgotten (actually, I have).

Back to the Linsley-Hood. This design was one of the first to use a quasi push-pull topology using all-NPN output transistors - type Sescosem BDY56 (what a memory for trivia). When I stripped out the excessive tone controls and filters from the preamp section I arrived at an amplifier that was really very good indeed, although it did run rather hot due to insufficient heatsinking.

The Cambridge speakers I built from completed cabinets acquired cheap (they had just gone bust) and a set of KEF drive units (B139 bass, B110 mid and T27 tweeters - I'm good at this). They were small transmission line designs, complete with lamb's wool filling, and gave me a taste for wide bandwidth at an early age. They were tonally neutral and gave me excellent service for a number of years.

The Connoisseur was a fun turntable with an undersized platter and a switch-on lever that gave the platter a spin to ensure it rotated in the right direction. The SME, in contrast, was a jewel of design and engineering. I remember that the damped cueing mechanism failed after a couple of years and SME not only replaced the mechanism but also brought the entire arm up to latest revision for the princely charge of £1. That's service that sticks in the mind for a long time.

Cartridges gave me a lot of trouble. The Goldrings were dull, the Shures uncouth. The best match for the SME was the Empire (2000E/III if I remember correctly), but potentially the best sound was the Ultimo/Dynavector except for its lightweight bass and midrange dominant sound. Little did I know then how much the arm choice could improve the Dynavector's sound.

A little later, I decided the Linsley-Hood had to go, in favour of something a little more powerful. I started reading up on the (then) new Hitachi power MOSFETs and their circuit notes. I bought a lot of components, and two big cases to house them in, to create a passive preamp and butch power amp. I remember using two 625VA toroidal transformers for the power amp, plus a whole row of reservoir capacitors. Huge overkill, all wasted because the basic circuit was dynamically compressed and flat sounding with little detail. I lived with this disappointing behemoth for too long, constantly tweaking it to try to get better results. It was time to move on...

Sometime later, I was persuaded to take valve (tube) equipment seriously after a friend bought a pair of very rare and expensive Dynavector valve monoblocks. They sounded stunning, with clarity and immense dynamic drive. I was smitten.

When a Croft SIP preamp and Series 4S power amp became available ex-dem from Audio T in West Hampstead, I bit and bought them both. Sometime later, I bought a Mitsubishi direct drive mechanism and made a new turntable out of it, which was more reliable than the Connoisseur, but no better sounding.

An interlude with the launch of CD saw first a Philips CD-104 and then a CD-650 in short order. They were interesting, but gave little clue as to how much information is locked in a CD. More of that much later in this story.

Then I decided that I had to acquire a 'real' turntable, so bought a Michell Syncro with Helius Aureus pickup arm. The turntable was a beauty, the arm a good visual match but, unfortunately, not well built. It had problems with binding bearings and I had to keep re-setting them to stop the arm from, well, stopping half way across a record. The Ortofon MC-10 sounded very fine, though, despite it being my second one. The first cartridge never lived to play anything as I swiped the cantilever while attaching it to the arm. Exit one cartridge, stage left.

Also at around this time, I decided to retire the Cambridge speakers in favour of a pair of JBL L-100T which were large reflex designs with the classic JBL 12" paper cone woofer and titanium tweeter. The smaller L-20T were popular at the time, but the L-100T was virtually unknown in the UK. The Croft drove them well and they made a very respectable sound with the ability to go low and loud without break-up.

A little later, I invested in my first true high end component: a Roksan Xerxes turntable with SME IV pickup arm and Audio Technica AT-OC7 cartridge. Phono preamp duties were courtesy of an EAR834P De-Luxe.

Soon after that, I went down to Covent Garden Records having decided that I had to replace previous CD players with something of the calibre of the Roksan. After listening to Denon and Marantz models from the top of their range, I ended up with a beautiful Pioneer PD-91 Reference Series, a battleship of a CD player.

Some time earlier, I had bought a speaker kit from IPL Acoustics (S5TL), a UK kit vendor. I sent the cabinet drawings to my father in the hope that he would build me some fine cabinets for me to complete with wiring and drivers. He certainly came up with beautiful cabinets, but about five years later. He had been a little busy. Nevertheless, they looked wonderful in Brazilian Rosewood and I completed them in just a few days. They sounded very good, smoother than the JBLs with more insight and extended but not such powerful bass despite being transmission line designs.

I also distracted myself by acquiring a Leak Stereo 20 and completely rebuilding it with modern components. I also changed the biasing of the phase splitter stage and replaced the input stage with the more linear ECC82 valve. It also has soft recovery solid state rectifiers and large polypropylene reservoir capacitors to replace the original electrolytics. What an extraordinary amplifier. I learned all I know about soundstage depth and width, microdynamics and the throwing forward of voice in the mix. It doesn't have much power but drives speakers very well and sounds like a much more expensive amp. For a while, I even bi-amped my system with the Croft driving the bass and the Leak driving the mid/treble.

On the CD front, I went for the Assemblage DAC-3 and, later, the D2D-1 upsampler, both fine pieces of digital equipment. Together with an Audio Research CDT-1 bought used from Heatherdale Audio, my CD replay performance was significantly raised - but not into the realms of extreme high end I had heard elsewhere. For that, I had to wait for the Sony SCD-1.

Another house move and a divorce later, I ended up with what I have now, a far cry from my hi-fi beginnings. It's been a great trip.

It started for me at the age of five years old listening to the Yardbirds 'Shapes of Things' on a bright pink Dansette Tempo that was at the time my parents record player. I quickly moved on to listening to Renaissance and all of that beautiful Prog Rock that I was so lucky to have been born in to. Thank my parents I was born when I was...!

Ok for me i got my love for music , mostly because of my Dad ! he introduced me to the greatness of Classical music and also the Beatles and Simon and garfunkel .

Back in about 1970 ' i remember my Dad took delivery of this large cabinet thing ,and i asked what it was ' a stereo radiogram ' my Dad said , here take a look , inside was a Garrard autochanger ' and Bush reciever (solid state) , it was a marvelous at the time and Dad was so proud of it. l

This stood us well throughout the 70's , though i seem to recall that vinyl playback gradually got worse , then i got my own 1st system in 1982 , a phillips rack system ' pretty poor really but i ddn't know any better , in 1984 i added a Phillips CD101 , wow CD perfect sound ? not.

It was about this time i discovered real hifi , and started reading the mags , i remember coming across an odd rag so it seemed ' and a bloke called Frankland raving about a turntable called a Linn LP12 and how crap my prized CD player was and of course i believed it.

So i got shot of everything bar the 101 and went out and bought a

Dual 505 mk2

NAD 3020 because Frankland said it bested an SP8 lol

Technics st400 tuner

Tannoy Mercury mk1

79 strand cable

Target rack

Sorted

Very soon i realized i needed a better TT and the following year i had a mad desire to get a Logic Tempo with Datum arm and p77 cart , though i really wanted a Linn , i could not wait the extra 6 months or so to afford one .

The Logic was a great improvement , i then decided to upgrade the amp and not liking the fave rave 8000A which my neigbour had i went for a Cyrus 2 followed by the PSX psu , this turned into a mistake after the initial impressive powerful presentation , it sounded very dry and a bit hard :doh:

Almost forgot to put this in ! i traded the Logic in for an LP12/basik+ in very late 1986

In 1988 i got an Ittok and K9 for my LP12 followed in 1990 by Ekos/Troika ,
but it was at this time i met Darryl and John ' both guy's had LP12's like myself although John had quite literally just jumped ship and sold his as he had just discovered valves ( Audio by design) and had just bought a deck called the Voyd .

Darryl had a LP12/ittok/Asaka ' but was really into Valve amps and an agent for Concordant and a mad tweaker/DIY'er , he introduced me to the late and great Doug Dunlop ' we went to his house in Barwell for a music evening and marvelous it was , the sight of Doug swapping valves ! while the amp (Quad 2) was playing ' will live with me forever ' Darryl looking at me with an astonished look , trying very hard not to laugh :lol:.

I ended up buying an Excelsior pre and Doug's modded Quad's and sold all the Misson Cyrus stuff (i also had the CD player) later i got hold of a Pioneer PD9300.

I used the Concordant amps with Rogers LS7t , adding in 1994 the Exemplar solid stater ,during a brief dalliance with some rosewood AE1's but i still had the Quad's , i tired of the AE1's and on Dougs advice bought Snell type J's .

It was at this time that poor old Doug developed Alzheimers and ended up in a home , eventually he passed away a few years later.

My LP12 had not really changed much up until 1996 when i had it serviced getting the Cirkus upgrade' at the same time i had my Troika rebuilt and i got hold of an Audio innovations 1000 mc transformer .

By this time my good pal John had a Helius orion AN IO cart for his Voyd , he also had invested in some new amps a series 1000 pre and 2nd audio mono's
to use with his Snell type E's , i decided i had to have the 2nd's but i did not care for the 1000 pre .

In 1997 i sold my Concordant Quads and the Exemplar and found a pair of 2nd audio's at a good price , adding a pair of Border patrol psu's in 1999 ,
it was in 1999 that i made the decision to part with my Linn as i was offered a Voyd .5 with reference psu for £1500 a bargain when you consider it was £4500 new , so i went for it getting an SME 310 and having been pursuaded to try a Music maker at the same time .

This was intended to be my last turntable , but in 2005/6 i made the rather rash and hasty decision to sell everything to help with my mortgage ,as things turned out i didn't need to ! but ahh well such as life.

These days i have a much more modest or less ambitious set up but am enjoying my music just as much and buying more of it than ever .

looking back i dread to think of how much i have spent and wasted , not even gone into cables and other shite ' but then again i've squandered quite a bit on cars , having made a few mistakes ' what the hell:rolleyes:.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joe

lying on the sitting room floor with a speaker either side of my head.

---

I used to do that. It's amazing. :)

I was 15 years old and enjoyed playing records on the family music centre. War of the worlds has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, one day my mother "volunteered" my to babysit for a friend of hers as they were off on a night out. I was not amused.:steam:

There was some solace due to the fact I could use their stereo, they would give me some tins of beer and a crispy new £5 note.

I duly arrived at the appointed time and was shown their stereo and given a brief instruction to its use. I nearly wet myself when I saw the stack of Silver Sony separates, the JBL speakers and a pile of Zappa records.:eek:

I was in heaven.:) I settled down to Sheik Yerbuti and a beer and engrossed myself in quality music to a level previously unheard of. An hour later, things got even better when the 15 year old daughter arrived back home and we spent the rest of the evening drinking beer and "discussing" the finer details of Joes Garage.:eyebrows:

I vowed that one day I would have a stereo that good and when I started work thats what I did. Today, my stereo is infinitely better than that Sony system, but I still remember it well. Or was it her daughter I remember with such fondness??

I always liked music even as a kid but that passion for music started when I was 15 I was always listening to music on the radio and started to read about the bands I liked , I was quick to discover my music taste at the time was Heavy metal so started to get albums by the artist I liked artists like Sabbath, Rainbow, Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Van Halen and Rush. I started going to concerts I was lucky enough to see Bon Scott with AC/DC, Boston and many more bands.
In about 82 I started going to smaller clubs like the Marquee I still remember the first band I saw play their Y&T both nights...the heat was intense. So all my money started to go on buying records from Shades (2 to 3 a week) or going to the Marquee (at least twice a week), to be honest I thought Hifi was for the piped slipper brigade and pretty much sure the youth of today will look at me in a similar way.
I started to play the guitar this opened my ears to different styles of music I started to listen to people like Django and Charlie Christain
Getting into Hifi was a complete accident My component system I had for years finally gave up, I decided to get something decent so not knowing anything I ended up with a AE109 some Myriad T40 power amps and Phillips CD player. I remember just feeling so frustrated, every upgrade I got improved something but lacked something else, it was a frustrating time and I spent far to much money trying to get it right. Over time I got a better understanding of what I wanted in a system and for the last year or two I been pretty happy with the sounds I am getting.
I think the worst time for me was when I started to always analysis what I was hearing it really got in the way of simply enjoying music, thankfully I can now turn on and off this. I do not want to be listening to aspects of the sound, for me its about the enjoyment of the music
As for forums I only really fitted in here at AOS I used to post on other sites
With my friends I do not really talk hifi it would bore them, but music I can always have good chats about music with them as they have similar obsessions that way, so here I have a place where I can join in when I want too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chris@panteg

Ok for me i got my love for music , mostly because of my Dad ! he introduced me to the greatness of Classical music and also the Beatles and Simon and garfunkel .

---

Snap :lol:

I'm not sure how old i was but i guess about 4 years old, so we are looking at 1970 when i had my first proper introduction to a decent hifi system. Father took me into the "music room" as it was known then on a Sunday & we'd listen to some music together. He'd have quite a bit specifically tailored for children to listen to, some of it must still be here in actuality :eyebrows: After the kiddy stuff he'd put on some Simon & Garfunkel or Beatles, Mamas & Papas or classical. I always sat there happy to listen, after all it sounded marvelous to me :) At the time he had Goldring G99, SME3009, Shure M75ED? Quad 33/303 & Leak Sandwich 600 speakers.

My first system (if you can call it that) was a mono radio cassette (Panasonic) that soon had an extension speaker plugged into it. As my father was the manager of a TV & radio shop a rather dead Lloytron speaker found it's way home & with a fair selection of drive units that sat in the loft i picked an old 10" stentorian (odd thing, it could be wired 4, 8 or 16ohms) along with something else for the treble.

Soon after i built my first enclosure myself & fitted a Wharfedale cloth surround 12", wharfedale cs8" gold chassis & the super3" tweeter. I was probably 12 years old at this point.

My first stereo was a Furguson Cassiever, the silver one, not the more powerful & better specified black version. At this point i was back to giveaway speakers :doh: A pair of Castle Richmonds were borrowed on a longish loan from the shop until one xmas santa sent me a Kefkit which consisted of a pair of B200 & T27 along with the crossovers :eyebrows:

I soon built a pair of smallish transmission lines which after a load of fettling sounded pretty darn good if i do say so myself ;)

Some time later this cassiever was replaced with a JVC stack system & i had my first record deck :)

My first decent buy of what i'd call hifi gear was probably when i was 19 or so when i purchased a secondhand JVC QLY5F with JVC MC2E moving coil cartridge. I also purchased a QED MC pre amp to compliment this.

Since that time it has been a gradual case of upgrading kit & building new speakers until i got where i am today. A house full of stuff that i don't use hardly any of :lolsign: I honestly can't remember a quarter of what has been used in my systems. I still have more stuff than i can shake a stick at sitting here & i often go looking for something & turn up some things i totally forgot about like a pair of Quad 405 amps i rediscovered recently :doh:

It's been a hell of a lot of fun getting here though ;)

When I was in my early teens (thank god that’s over) I remember listening to Alan Freemans Top of the Pops on my parents Bush Radiogram.
I can also remember Beatle mania and the Rolling Stones early releases :eyebrows:
My greatest teen music related experience was getting to meet Count Bassie and Georgy Fame after a concert they held at the Albert Hall. I’ve also met the Rolling Stones among others :)
Teenagers didn’t have much in the way of disposable income in those days so buying records let alone a Hi Fi was out of most teenagers reach. I had a paper round though and can recall buying my first Long Playing record; Vanilla Fudge :eek: who I had heard on one of the pirate radio stations around at the time, probably Radio Caroline.
My very first sound system comprised a car radio tape player and a pair of car speakers which I screwed to the wall :lolsign:
After I finished my studies and started work as an engineer ( yes it is true, you did used to be able to earn a living doing this in this country :steam:) I became interested in sound; not necessarily Hi FI, through my job.
The first bit of serious kit I bought was a Reel to Reel, a Revox B something or other feeding an old Leak valve receiver; can’t remember too much about the speakers but I think they were a relatively cheap offering from Mission.
The reason for the Reel to Reel was at the time me and few mates were putting on bands in local venues and recording them as some were participating in competition a music newspaper called Melody Maker ran at the time.
(It makes me smile to think we paid AC/DC £20 to play at a small local venue in Watford when they first came to England; took me about a week to straighten up after that gig)
In my early 20’s I bought my first proper Hi Fi more or less by accident. I was looking for some Threshold amps and had gone to a shop in London called Unilet Hi Fi. They had on demo a pair of Volt Boxers built by David Lyth to demonstrate his bass drivers primarily. Feeding these was a Quantum Electronics set up(102 and 207DA’s) I bought a Thorens TD160S, SME3 and Goldring 900iGC to feed that lot the next day. After a bit of pestering I managed to persuade Unilet to sell me the lot and I still have them now although the speakers have undergone a lot of changes over the years, mainly thanks to the patience of David Lyth.
It didn’t take me long to realize that a lot of the stuff that was flavor of the month Hi Fi was basically overpriced and I eventually stopped buying and started building :mental:
I have a couple of more affluent mates from my engineering and Uni days who are still very much into their Hi Fi and music who went into the recording industry after the decline of engineering and our earlier band promoting experiences who I keep in touch with. We swap and compare fairly regularly so i get to hear some of the more esoteric kit.
I haven’t spent a fortune on Hi Fi but I’ve had a few interesting bits and pieces over the years.

Strangely I still have the Quantum amps which still put many higher priced amps to shame and I’ve remained a Volt fan having heard nothing that comes close at the price. The Thorens and a couple of arms and assorted cartridges got sold a couple of months ago (crazy what people will pay for a machine that drags a needle along a wobbly groove in a bit of plastic :mental:). The Quantum kit will go next.

I’m computer based now and very happy with it in general.

My forays into hi-fi started in the 1978, when I started to listen in earnest to music regularly on my parents' Dynatron Radiogram. My Grandparents bought my parents a new system in 1979 (Technics SL-BD20 TT, SU7300 amp and Celestion 15XRs).
At that time, I started looking around at hi-fi more and ended up in a saturday job in my local hi-fi shop in Canterbury. There I was educated by my boss in the subtle vocabulary from Jewish communities in Boston and the East Coast - his name was Ken Kessler.
I took my wages in kit rather than cash and so I started the upgrade path - first up was a Thorens TD160B, with an old Hadcock 228 that had been sitting in the window unsold for years. Next was a Decca cartridge to replace the VMS20E and later the Decca was sent to the Garrott Brothers for one of their legendary rebuilds (I still have it and use it now).
From there, I was smitten by valves/tubes, turntables, Nakamichi and the such like (real surprise that when you work with KK). All Linn/Naim users were labelled as schmucks and that's how I still see it today. I ended up buying KK's Quad IIs (still in use after a rebuild by GT Audio in the 1990s) and then other stuff that customers brought in for PX, such as an original Logic DM101 (on which went an Audio Technica AT1100 and Micro Seiki LC80W - critics faves in the early 80s).
The TD160 was then sold and I migrated to my first TD124 in a SME plinth (with the Hadccock and Decca). This went and was replaced by another TD124 in a custom plinth, still with the Hadcock and Decca.
My valves went into hiding temporarily as I travelled around the country as a junior doctor every 6-12 months and so I diverged into a Meridian 101 and M3s (much easier to carry in the boot of my Fiat Uno). These were my regular fare until I became a consultant in the late 90s, when my Quads came out to play. My venerable TD124 was sold only 6 years ago when I got a great deal on a Platine Verdier, equipped with a Schroeder Model 2/Allaerts MC1B and yes, you've guessed my original Hadcock and Decca is now on it too. My Quads are still playing today, although the 22 has long gone and been replaced by a TRON pre-amp. The M3s went and in came a large pair of Avantgarde Duos. My vinyl collection has settled in a permanent home and my wet Moth RCM now allows me to re-acquaint myself with LPs from the golden age of vinyl.
Occasionally I take out my receipt from the Garrott Brothers with their comments on my Decca rebuild back in 1981 - it brings back many happy memories and also much sadness at their tragic passing.

Charlie
www.charlie-chan.co.uk

Growing up in the 60s music around the house came from various pieces of funiture called radiograms and a smallish radio set in the kitchen for Mum to listen to her 'modern rubbish' that was frowned upon by Dad. Mum listened to Petula Clark and Sandie Shaw, Dad listend to Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. In 1973 at the age of 15 I saved enough for a Philips mono cassette player, and all my paper round money was saved up for tapes, I remember I had some Eric Clapton, Beatles and Led Zeppelin tapes and later recorded Tubular Bells off my mates record player, we had to be very quiet as we used an external mic, but you could still hear me whisper 'It's pissing down' while I was looking out the window, at the end of side 1. I don't thike Mike would have approved.
I then moved on to an ITT self contained record player with removable speakers for stereo reproduction and joined the army as an electronics apprentice where I was exposed to all sorts of music I had never heard before, this was the end of '74.
Within 6 months my collection had the likes of Roxy Music and Rick Wakeman alongside of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Part of the apprenticeship was to build our own 2.5 watt stereo receiver, we did the lot, from making PCBs to the string and toothpick tuning indicator. I seem to remember the tuner was of a Mullard design, speakers were 15 ohm elliptical full range items of dubious manufacture mounted to a piece of wood (open baffle). My then girlfriend had a Sony music centre in her lounge and this went way louder than my 2.5 watts, so with the aid of my cousin, a qualified Electronics engineer, 2.5 watts became around 15. My first taste of upgraditis and watt envy.

Music tastes were still on the Rock side, but was being watered down with Elton John and Hall & Oates, some Bob Marley crept in there too. The Equipment was changing too, I now had an Amstrad TP12D TT with a Goldring G800 and later an MP11, Amplification was 35Watts of Amstrad power, speakers were by Goodmans (sadly not LS3/5a though).

Prog Rock and Blues now were the sounds and some disco for the wife, trips overseas brought music from Indonesia, Turkey and Europe into the fold.

I now find myself able to listen to just about any music and appreciate it for what it has to offer, all except 'both kinds - country and western'.

Here endeth my missive.

1978. A choice between my bike, and having something more than our family Marconiphone integrated record player / amp / speaker.

I was convinced that Queen or The Jam could sound bigger and better. Yep, I had new wave and old rock, away from the cities you could still get away with liking both.

My father sourced me an Eagle turntable from an electrical wholesaler, and I got a Glanz cartridge from Laskys, my bike didn't fetch much after all. I borrowed Bryan 15 watt amp (made in Hale, Cheshire I'll have you know). For the first six months I made do with some Pioneer car speakers. Then the journey continued...

Pete

I was born in 1988.

For me, it started in 2003. My uncle knew that I was into finding vintage TV sets at the curb and playing around with them. He asked me if I had any interest in stereo equipment... He had found, on the curb, a 1960's valve Fisher stereophonic receiver with matching speakers.... I grabbed it and never looked back.

Many happy hours playing FM and CD's through the auxiliary/tape input...bands like the Eagles, Jethro Tull, Steve Miller, Kansas, ZZ Top....

Years later, my system has evolved, I'm into LPs in a big way, and I am still basking in the warm glow of valves ( Rogue Audio Cronus integrated amp/KT77's pushing Vandersteen 2C's with a Pro-Ject TT and Ortofon OM-40 up front)

and I have my uncle to thank.

For me, the defining sequence was being dumped when I was 15! Had spent the day with "her" listening to "love will tear us apart" on what seemed the most fantastic system...she was rich and we were poor,but we listened to that song probably 50 times that summer day... think she had an LP12 and other fab stuff...the notes floated in the air... we had a Goodmans. Got dumped soon after! Anyhow that sound/experience stuck and forever I've been chasing it.

My (not very interesting) story.

The only music at home whilst I was young (other than the radio) was a Bush record player (all in one jobbie, padded black vinyl finish outside, 4-speed autochanger inside). The records were all K-Tel style cheapies from Woolworths.

One Christmas (think it was 1975), we visited my auntie and uncle's. My cousin was into music and hi-fi and I spent the whole evening going through his extensive record collection - Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Queen, Led Zep all got played. I was hooked. His system was a Garrard SP25 (MkIII), home-made amps and KEF speakers (can't remember which ones).

All my available pocket money was now spent at the record shop in Marple. It was there the guy working in the shop played me Phaedra by Tangerine Dream. I'd never heard anything like it! They were to become my favourite band.

My cousin very kindly gave me his Garrard SP25 MkIII with Goldring G800. (He had upgraded to a Connoisseur BD1). My parents chipped in with an Amstrad EX220 amp and a bit of saving enabled me to buy a pair of Solavox (Comet's own brand) SP25 speakers (they were badged Wharfdale Denton XP2s). Later on an NEC cassette deck was added.

After university, my first pay packet was spent at Richer Sounds on a Dual CS505 Deluxe, Ortofon OM10, Rotel RA820BX and KEF Coda IIIs. Soon after a Fisher AD800 CD player was added. That was the first system that I owned that could really be called hi-fi (with the possible exception of the CD player!) and the obsession continues to this day.:eyebrows:

My mother turned me on to The Beatles in 1963, we in the St. Louis metropolitan area had the privledge of hearing the early singles probably months prior to the rest of the country due to George Harrison's sister living in Southern Illinois (Benton) and having George visit sometime before the others made it over originally. Louise Harrison saw to it that DJ's at various St. Louis radio stations (KXOK, WIL) had copies. The entire neighborhood was at my house during the Ed Sullivan TV debut because we were the only home with a colored TV in the entire neighborhood. After that my neighbors came home from Germany with cheap Kenwoods and Sansuis and Pioneers, by then I was surely hooked.

My first hi-fi encounter was back in 1971. The chap I worked for wanted a babysitter every weekend so him and the wife could go for nights out. He lived in a very old cottage with low ceilings, exposed beams and creaking floorboards. He said I could raid his drinks cabinet if I wanted to and he said I could watch TV or listen to music, but first he had to show me how to operate the hi-fi.

It was a Braun music centre and from what I discovered later it only had around 8 - 10 watts per channel running into very small B&O bookshelf speakers, but because it was a small pokey cottage it was more than enough power to make some very nice noises. Never bothered with the TV, just went through his entire record collection week after week, with Neil Diamond, Elvis, Jose Feliciano and plenty of Jazz music. Not my musical tastes at all back then but great to listen to for sound quality

Well the world was blessed by my presence midway through 1968. Always been music in our family, mother was in the Beatles fan club. My fasination with progressive rock started with an ELP 'Brain Salad Surgery' flexidisc hanging about in dads 45's which was put out to promote the album. dad got the disc free with a music magazine. this was to be the music style i chose for my long term listerning pleasures.I did start very early with quality hifi a good few years before leaving school, i was doing at least 4 part time paid jobs before leaving school hence nothing was stopping a rich school boys audio adventures.. There's not enough room to list all the specialist hi-fi equipment i've ploughed through over the years honestly but it's been an hell of a lot.I'm not one for following hifi trends, i've always gone backwards & forwards with things i buy & i certainly never buy new anymore.Music is my life & always will be, take that away & i'm finished.

My entry into hi fi is really because of my Dad, he always had some kind of record player or radiogram about, also used to have the odd reel to reel tape deck around as well, which I always thought looked pretty impressive...

So, in my mid teens, I whined and moaned at him until he bought me secondhand hi fi separates, a Goldring GL75, with Amstrad (tuner/amp) and a pair of Wharfedale speakers (Dittons?), the first 45rpm single I ever bought was Paul Simons, Me and julio down at the Schoolyard, loved it, the first album was T Rex, Bolan Boogie.

I then moved onto a Trio deck (not the KD 1033, one or two above that, it was ivory coloured), Pioneer amp, Aiwa cassette deck (the wedged shaped one), Yamaha tuner, Acoustic Research bookshelf speakers, then moved onto an Ariston RD11s, SME/Ortofon VMS20E setup, then moved onto a Denon amp and B&W speakers, music tastes was rock/blues/female vocals.

This combination took me up to 1983, when I took the head staggers and sold my hi fi equipment and gave all my LPs away, mostly to my sisters. Hi fi was given a 20 year break until 2003 or so, when I bought a Cambridge Audio A5 amp, and Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers, playing MP3s from computer, connected an early Beresford DAC but didn't really do anything so sold that on, then upgraded to NAD C320BEE and Kef iQ1s, then bought SqueezeBox Classic (3), Marantz PM7001 and Wharfedale Diamond 10.1 speakers, with firstly CA DACmagic, then ZeroDAC (Upgrade version), recently have moved onto SqueezeBox Touch, Roksan Kandy K2 (int amp), Audio-GB DAC-19MK3, PMC DB1S+ and some Mark Grant cables, FLACs and high VBR MP3s streamed from small file server...

That is everything to date I think...

It began with a deserted diner. A man too long without sleep. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy!..............

Oh no. That was "The Invaders" - a Quinn Martin production:)

For me, my hi fi odyssey began way back in 1970. My parents bought me an Alba autochanger record player which had two controls - Volume and tone!

Within a year or so I progressed to a Pye 'Black Box' stereo system with smiked glass lid and seperate bass and treble controls.

I had collected loads of records by then and somehow it led me into the disco business in the early seventies.

I had a mobile disco which I called "Hot Wax Sound System". I painted a hardboard logo with dayglow colours (I think it formed part of my GCE Art submission) and once illuminated by an ultraviolet tube it formed the centrepiece of my light show (+ bubble wheel, sound to light converter and strobe)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0028.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0009.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0008.jpg

I had twin BSR decks (an alternative to the ubiquitous Garrard SP25's of the time) 500 watts of amplification and some nice twin 15" speaker cabs!

I flogged it all in 1976 and purchased what I suppose was my first 'proper' hi fi - Technics Direct Drive tt, Technics SU3500 integrated amp and Tannoy Cheviot speakers. I also had a Technics cassette deck.

The long upgrade path had commenced and aural dissatisfaction gave way to the acquisition of a Linn Sondek LP12 with Grace/Supex, Meridian 101/103D amplification and a pair of Nightingale speakers.

In due course, the Meridan was upgraded to 105S and the speakers swapped for Linn Isobarik DMS.

Various arms/cartridges came and went on the LP12 including Mission 774, Syrinx PU2/3 until finally I arrived at the Ittok/Asak combo.

In 1981 I went active with the purchase of a Linn Isobarik PMS system from Subjective Audio (Howard Popeck). A collaboartion with Meridian that included 6 X 105S power amps with dedicated electronic x-overs for the Isobariks.

Apart from a change to an Oracle turntable, that system pretty much stayed stable until 1987 when I went back to Subjective Audio for an Oxford Acoustics Crystal reference turntable (recently the subject of a stimulating thread from Peter), SMEV/Koetsu Red. The Meridian 101 pre was exchanged for an Audio Research SP9 and the following year (1988) the Isobarik active system went and in came an Aragon 4004 american muscle amp (designed by Dan D'Agostino and dubbed "The poor man's Krell") with a pair of TDL Monitor transmission line speakers on the end.

I was pretty much content with that system until 2003 when in a mad flurry of expenditure, I started upgrading again until I arrived at my present system.

I hate to think what I have spent over the years but it is a lot!

Oh well. You can't take it with you I suppose!

Great pics days of real men eh Steve :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Andre

Great pics days of real men eh Steve :)

---

I can still hear the strains of Silver Machine by Hawkwind as I powered up the strobe light:)

That's quite a bit of amplification for back in the day Steve :lol: Nice going ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Snoopdog

I can still hear the strains of Silver Machine by Hawkwind as I powered up the strobe light:)

---

Now that's proper. I had the hair to do it justice then, too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MartinT

Now that's proper. I had the hair to do it justice then, too.

---

I had a medley of favourites that I used to play back to back to give the strobe a workout.

Silver Machine, Frankenstein - Edgar Winter, You ain't seen nothing yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive, This Flight Tonight - Nazareth, Polecat Woman - Three Man Army and then slowing it down with Radar Love - Golden Earring and Hold your head up - Argent:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reid Malenfant

That's quite a bit of amplification for back in the day Steve :lol: Nice going ;)

---

Simms Watts and then H/H Reid:)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Snoopdog

It began with a deserted diner. A man too long without sleep. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy!..............

Oh no. That was "The Invaders" - a Quinn Martin production:)

For me, my hi fi odyssey began way back in 1970. My parents bought me an Alba autochanger record player which had two controls - Volume and tone!

Within a year or so I progressed to a Pye 'Black Box' stereo system with smiked glass lid and seperate bass and treble controls.

I had collected loads of records by then and somehow it led me into the disco business in the early seventies.

I had a mobile disco which I called "Hot Wax Sound System". I painted a hardboard logo with dayglow colours (I think it formed part of my GCE Art submission) and once illuminated by an ultraviolet tube it formed the centrepiece of my light show (+ bubble wheel, sound to light converter and strobe)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0028.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0009.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...f/scan0008.jpg

I had twin BSR decks (an alternative to the ubiquitous Garrard SP25's of the time) 500 watts of amplification and some nice twin 15" speaker cabs!

I flogged it all in 1976 and purchased what I suppose was my first 'proper' hi fi - Technics Direct Drive tt, Technics SU3500 integrated amp and Tannoy Cheviot speakers. I also had a Technics cassette deck.

The long upgrade path had commenced and aural dissatisfaction gave way to the acquisition of a Linn Sondek LP12 with Grace/Supex, Meridian 101/103D amplification and a pair of Nightingale speakers.

In due course, the Meridan was upgraded to 105S and the speakers swapped for Linn Isobarik DMS.

Various arms/cartridges came and went on the LP12 including Mission 774, Syrinx PU2/3 until finally I arrived at the Ittok/Asak combo.

In 1981 I went active with the purchase of a Linn Isobarik PMS system from Subjective Audio (Howard Popeck). A collaboartion with Meridian that included 6 X 105S power amps with dedicated electronic x-overs for the Isobariks.

Apart from a change to an Oracle turntable, that system pretty much stayed stable until 1987 when I went back to Subjective Audio for an Oxford Acoustics Crystal reference turntable (recently the subject of a stimulating thread from Peter), SMEV/Koetsu Red. The Meridian 101 pre was exchanged for an Audio Research SP9 and the following year (1988) the Isobarik active system went and in came an Aragon 4004 american muscle amp (designed by Dan D'Agostino and dubbed "The poor man's Krell") with a pair of TDL Monitor transmission line speakers on the end.

I was pretty much content with that system until 2003 when in a mad flurry of expenditure, I started upgrading again until I arrived at my present system.

I hate to think what I have spent over the years but it is a lot!

Oh well. You can't take it with you I suppose!

---

Ah, I've come across your little website in the past..

That girl in the photos thinks your cool.. Is that her boyfriend having to stand in between?

My story is fairly gear-based I'm afraid.

I always like the clunkyness and feel of my Dad's Aiwa deck and Yamaha receiver (nice heavy dial and clunky switches) but music wasn't big in my family home appart from the radio perhaps..

At school though, a couple of friends' dads were into hi-fi. One was a collector of older gear from boot sales and I was always jealous of all the gear, hi-fi and studio gear, that my friend picked up. I just like the new toy aspect of all the old gear plus he listened to a lot of music.

The other friend was actually Howard Popeck's son so hearing those M1s turned all the way up showed me what hifi could do! Mainly live albums (that his son played) came alive although I was always a bit on edge because of the volume, thinking someone would come round and complain. The gear on Howard's shelves facinated me too, especially the Nakamichi pre-amp he had at the time. All of it had been left on for about 23 years at the time - never ever switched off, never ever therefore failed.

Got into Ebay around 2001 and from there my knowledge of hifi grew and grew. It's only because of the internet that I've been able to persue it as a kind of hobby.

Now I'm swamped with stuff and often don't get to just sit and listen to music because there's too much hifi around distracting me. I'm trying to get rid of most of it, slowly.. err, think I'm addicted.

Christmas 1996 i got my first CD lol, it was Huge Hits 97, that was the same christmas i had an aiwa all in one also, the bloke who lived next door gave me some Gale bookshelf speakers to use with it, sounded lots better, but i wanted more, went through quite a few all in one systems until i decided to buy my first proper hi-fi.

Started reading What hi-fi mag also, so then came new Phono leads, speaker wire etc etc.

My first proper hi-fi cost me i think £2000 and included:

Technics SU-A900mk3 Integrated Amp.
Technics SL-PD670D CD Player.
Technics SJ-MD100 Minidisc Deck.
Technics ST-GT350L Tuner. (not 100% sure on this)
Technics RS-BX501 Tape Deck.
Technics SB-M500 Floorstanding Speakers.

Also some expensive interconnects etc, cant remember what they was, the system sounded great, had it for around a year n half and sold it for £700, missed it alot and regret selling it, so started again a year after and built a new Technics system:

Technics SU-A909 Pre/Power Amp.
Technics SL-PS7 CD Player.
Technics SJ-MD150 MD Deck.
Eltax Liberty 5+ Floorstanders.

Again i loved it, but slowly found i wasn't using it much, so i sold it again.

Didnt have any decent hi-fi then, just another cheap all in one.

Now 8 years later im back, i bought from ebay these:

Technics SU-A700mk3 Amp.
Technics SL-PS670D CD Player.
Technics SJ-MD100 MD Deck.
Eltax Wave Mini Speakers.

Now i had this for the bedroom as i have got a Sony STR-DH810 / BDP-S360 for the main room, but the Technics was too big, so just finished selling back on ebay and got myself a Teac A-H300 Reference Amp, and still looking for a matching CD player and MD recorder along with some Tannoy Mercury V1's.

Lesson learnt, never have Technics again lol, even if i do love there kit.

This is a repost that i originally posted in the new thread, and decided to put it here also.

Thanks for reading,
Adam.

I always thought Technics gear looked great. The gold lettering and curved matt black cases.

I got into it after visiting the The End night club in London which had a particularly good system.
I ended up with a Cambridge audio /Gale system bought from Richer sounds which strangely enough was opposite said club.

Well i entered the world in 1970, by 1973 i had started my facination with hifi, my mum tells me i wrecked about 10 of my dads cartridges that year, the turntable slowly got higher and higher and further out of reach, i just wanted it more, by the mid 78 my dad gave me his old TT cant remember what it was, a leak 30 amp and a set of wharfdale speakers, that was me hook line and sinker.

I guess that the first step was when I was 9-10; transistor radios and other electronics had to be taken apart and put back together.

Then music came into the picture; but the two wasn't really connected until when 18 a classmate invited me home to help out dragging speakers.

His parents was into classic music and had a Denon setup... something like a PRA 1000/ POA 2000 and a big Denon turntable.
I do not recall what speakers they had; but the new ones were a JM Lab set, Trapez-X and da da B&W DM7 Mark II... the DM7 was the clear winner... it was an awakening for me.

As a student money was non existent so I built myself... a Hiraga Class A clone. pre-amp TOP of the Range from Elektor 86, a subwoofer with a electronic filter from Elektor. It was combined with set of Stax ESTA 4U that I came by on a sale....

Then for many years there was only time to sporadic immercement.