"We did after all have one here with no system whatsoever..."
"At the time that he resumed performing and recording in 1963, Mississippi John Hurt did not own a guitar."
Gaslight Memories: Mississippi John Hurt’s Influence on the 1960s Folk Scene and Beyond – Acoustic Guitar
To be fair to geoffkait, he did (does?) have a few systems. He had a Discman, Walkman, and, at least, a set of Grado headphones. Which is not much less sophsticated than a turntable and tube amplification which are, in order of decades, more archaic than cassettes and CDs.