I am sure I am not the only Audiophile who has decided to keep most of their system the same for a long period of time. When you look round the net and indeed in the very few hifi shops that remain there is always a constant barrage of new and shiny toys pulling at your wallet and ready to drain your bank account but often I have found products have become "The next best thing". Ok there are always possible improvements to be had but it can be a time consuming and expensive road to travel as I found in the 1980's when I first started to become obsessed with all things audio.

Back then I knew nothing. I was eager to put together a system that sounded good but what was a good system as there was so much kit and so many posibilities and until you try a lot of it you cannot make any valid judgements and therefore I became a "box swapper". I spent about half my salary I buying new equipment then keeping it for 6 months or so before moving on. Always lost money! But luckily then as now there were ways to try stuff for free. I had a great hifi shop near near and could borrow and listen to a lot of gear and there was always the option of popping round your mates to listen to their gear. Funny isn't it how we all end up with a different range of equipment and very rarely do you find two people have exactly the same system. This gave me an inkling into the complexity of putting together a hifi system and it was only in later years I worked out we all heard everything differently and had different rooms and different size wallets!

Anyhow after about 5 years of furious box swapping and so many systems I cannot remember every bit of kit I had I did stop. Eventually I knew what sound I liked from a system and what were the important aspects that ticked the boxes for me. They were the typical Audiophile terms such as transparency, imaging, naturalness, soundstage and clarity. Each of us can attribute particular areas of sound we think are important and key to our listening experience. Back in the 1980's it was probably "how fu%%kin loud does it go"!

So with an understanding gained from huge amounts of box swapping and an empty wallet I knew what sound I wanted form my system and therefore when I returned to hifi in 2015 after a 25 year hiatus I had an aural image in my head that I wanted to translate into a system and that is exactly what I have now in my current set up. There are now more avenues than ever to wander down searching for your hifi dream as the internet has exploded our exposure to hifi through forums, YouTube videos and online magazines but I had a rough idea which ares to look in to put together my current set up. I knew I liked valves, I knew I liked natural sounding speakers but what I had forgotten was how good vinyl sounded.

Without going back to deep and in too much detail of my hifi history I had spent 25 years not indulging much actively in his as I put all my money into purchasing a property. During this period I had a basic CD set up but having accidentally stumbled on vinyl again I knew that this was where I needed to go with my system, hence why I run a turntable for 95% of my music listening.

Sorry about the ramble but it is an attempt to explain why I have ended up with the system I have today. So without going into too much detail I have popped a few pics up of the current gear sitting in the corner of my listening room.

VPI Scout 1.1 turntable with JMW 9T tonearm and 2M Black cartridge

7AC3A9DC-BCA1-47F8-B8C1-436DA4BEF41A by , on Flickr

8596E466-B73C-4E00-8FD1-02E59162C68D by y, on Flickr

06E5FA2C-B3E8-459F-87F5-7E0FE593C6DB by sy, on Flickr

Croft 25R Preamp with upgraded line stage and al NOS valves
EB4D0289-E3BC-4208-B0E3-AF471410D3CE by y, on Flickr

IMG_0033 by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/162281319@N03/[/url], on Flickr

Croft 7R power amplifier with upgrader transformer
4117A2A5-0F78-49D6-B169-EBCDFF526F24 by J
, on Flickr

Heco Celan GT 702 speakers

991321B0-2FCB-4186-A226-C3355B91AC02 by y, on Flickr