The first stereo you personally owned?

Magnavox made some incredible sounding stuff. The turntables were Collaro's which you can see in the old Allied Radio catalogs online. Some Magnavox had separate amps for the woofers and tweeters. And I believe some amps were single ended.

 

Wow, what made your parents get the 4311B's? I don't think they were sold in stores in 1976 other than pro audio outlets. The consumer version was the L100 but i think those date back to the 4310 days. I actually still have a pair of 4311B's from 1977.

 

A Magnavox where the table pulled down and the speakerd pivoted to the front shown here closed in photo from 1966.

 

I got a Sears portable stereo for Christmas in maybe 1964 or 5. It always played great and all my friends loved it. After I moved up to an ultra-modern RCA AM-FM stereo phono in 1969, I sold the old Sears stereo to a friend for $25.

 

At age 16 I dropped well over $2,000 in 1975 on my stereo rig.

Empire 698 table with their 2000Z cartridge, (still in use!), Dynaco ST 400 amp, Dynaco PAT 5 BI FET pre amp , Dynaco FM 5 tuner, (all Dynakits), a stand alone PS Audio phono preamp (yes in 1975!) and a JVC KD 85 cassette deck. I built massive home built speakers, each 270 pound triple wall custom designed ducted port box had 2 EV 15B woofers, 1 EV horn mid range and 1 EV T350 horn tweeter with a custom designed by Madisound crossover unit.

To say it played loud would be an understatement, it was like a live concert.

 

Here's my first stereo bought in 1970. It was made by a company called Fidelity, which I'm pretty sure were British.. The speakers clipped onto the unit to form the lid....very inventive eh! The unit in the photo is not mine, but an image I managed to google up. It brings back a few memories that's for sure.

 

Came with little speakers which fitted on the same shelf as my small collection of 45s. I can remember playing the ‘Public Image’ 45 and being delighted that the bass frequencies moved the speakers around as it played.

 

In the beginning there was...

 

My parents bought me a Hitachi HTA-3000 as a birthday or Christmas present. It's what I still use.

 

My audio journey began when I was 5 years old, stood on a chair to watch the RCA SHF-4 change records. I was aware of its big, room filling sound.

At age 16, I joined a band, but was not an audiophile. But naturally it seemed, I was the mate who shaped our sound, suggested amp settings and tonality of the guitars and bass... how they mixed and integrated. At that time the old hifi changer stopped working. I constructed mahogany speaker cabinets in wood shop, used the 12 inch full range drivers/ tweeters from the hifi set. The left speaker housed the 6v6 tube amp and tuner, mounted on the back panel. The drivers sounded better than they did in the hifi set. I did not know, just by a stroke of luck, the mahogany rectangular cabinets I made were far superior in bass reproduction, not the boominess as produced by the square shape of the hifi cab. The mahogany speakers ended up in a trade with my neighbor, who had an EV 664 mic that we needed to upgrade our vocals. They were good enough to impress.

My first stereo I actually owned was a Pioneer system from 1974, the SA-500A, CS-66 speakers, an AR turntable with Shure M91-ED, and a Sony reel to reel. I built a full size wall bookshelf for that system. At only 10 wpc (both channels driven) this stereo played loudly, could produce a kick drum hit strong enough to hit ya in the torso. My colleague on the job got me started (electrician at that time) had invited me to his home to check out his Sansui system. I was floored, and from that moment saved my paychecks to buy the Pioneer system one piece at a time. This system was upgraded in '75 to an SA-7500 (40 wpc which really didn't add too much in terms of volume and no audible improvement in quality.. surprising how good the little amp was.. spec-wise not as quiet and higher THD than the better model) But then the entire system with records was sold in 1976 to help pay college tuition.

 

as i recall i bought my first "real" Hi Fi when i was 17yrs. It was a Garrard SP25 TT a Trio amp and Celestion Ditton Speakers. The first album i bought especially to test it was Wish you were Here. I was convinced it had a fault until i realised i was listening to "sound effects"!! Silly me. It wasnt until i played loads of my other albums that i realised it was meant to sound like that

 

I used my parents' Hitachi HTA-4F receiver as my first stereo system and a very crappy Sony PS-LX70 player (which came from an 80's Sony all-in-one compact stereo system). The latter was so bad that I almost swore off vinyl records entirely but the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon really changed my mind.

 

Philips 851 - I had one of these, got it around 1976/77; later I added a secondhand Dual turntable (don't remember the model anymore).

 

It was a Zenith Circle of Sound system with a 2G tonearm. I assume 2G meant 2 grams tracking force. I bought it in 1969. That reasonably good tonearm saved me. The copy of Sticky Fingers I listen to today I bought new in April, 1971, my senior year in high school. It's in surprisingly good shape.

This piece had a long life. After I got a real hi-fi my junior year in college, I donated this to my residence, an old frat house that had been turned into a coed coop. It ended up in the pool room, with the speakers being stuck out the windows when we played volleyball in the front yard. Ten years later I went back for a reunion and it was still running. Amazing.

 

First I ever bought? Green JVC Kaboom Box

 

Circa 1990 when I had graduated from school and was finally making enough money to have less atrocious credit, I went out and financed a Panasonic SC-CH9 bookshelf system. That's when compact systems were just coming out and a big departure from the Kenwood and Pioneer full rack systems my brothers had. I think I bought it from Highland for around $850.

It served me well for years, I thought it sounded great at the time. I still have it, but it's been boxed in the garage for 15 years so not sure if it has withstood the effects of time. I keep thinking I'd like to set it up in my listening room for nostalgia reasons, but I'd likely never listen to it again. I lifted the pic below from the internet, it's the Technics model of the same unit, I believe they are identical.

 

I saw a pair of these speakers at a thrift store a couple of years ago. I thought they were odd and considered buying them but I just didn’t have the room.

 

What’s the silver box with the huge dial sitting on the guitar amp?

 

It’s a am/fm table radio on its side. i was a part of a band and we took all these wacky pictures. Everything is turned all around here.

 

Were you one of the stars in Super Bad?

 

I bought this in 1968. (Photo is off Google but it's an identical model.) All I had previously was a Dansette type record player and I didn't know much about stereo. It was unusual in that it had speakers at the side as well as the front and it was designed to be placed in a corner as shown in the photo.
The theory was that the sound bouncing off the walls would fill the room, but I still had to sit about two feet in front of it to get any kind of channel separation. I traded it in a year later for Philips setup with separate turntable, amplifier and speakers. But I still get nostalgic over this thing.

 

I was lucky. I've had a Pioneer PL-S30 hooked up to it. In the early 90's, I had a Radio Shack/Shure cart on it, which sounded better than you might think.

Today, I have a AT95E on it. Sounds pretty good. Cheap stuff, to be sure, but solid, old school equipment.

 

A KLH Model Twenty in 1969. Loved the sound of it -



Here’s Jack enjoying his also -

 

My first "system" and the one I have enjoyed playing music through more than anything else:

 

Alba stereo gramophone, circa 1968, bought from a shop in the Mander Centre in Wolverhampton. I replaced it with separates circa 1972.