The first system you had that was "high end/audiophile", by you standards

Acoustat Monitor 4's, RH labs subwoofers driven by Kenwood LO7M amps, Dalquist LP1 crossover, CJ preamp, LP 12/SME 3009, various cartidges, Denon SUT. This would be in 1979. 

@whart , Darn close. In 73 I had a pair of large advents and a pair of Klipsch Heresys a Fuzzlinear 700 and a  Marantz 7C. I did not get into ARC stuff until much later. I did pass through CJ territory. By the time I knew anything about Quads I had drifted into Acoustat. 

@whart , I sold the 7C years ago. The pots had become scratchy and the switches needed to be replaced. They were beyond cleaning. I never thought it would be worth much even though it was a great sounding preamp. Imagine that driving two Model 9's and K Horns or KLH Model 3's. (you could not get both volume and finesse in the day) That was ultimate back then. 

The Phase Linear 700 really got an unfair reputation. It was a much better sounding amp then the Crown D150 and driving a 4 to 8 ohm load it was perfectly reliable. With the 7C providing the tube character and the 700 the power it really was not bad at all. Back then I had no idea what real imaging was. Everything was 2 dimensional. I did not know about the third dimension until I heard it in 1979 in a high school teacher's system. It was about that time that I started working with Sound Components and became immersed in the audiophile world. I vividly remember my first exposure to the HQD system. Peter McGrath, the fellow who does those amazing recordings was the owner of Sound Components at the time. He put on this audiophile organ recording to get the Hartleys going and the top Quad on the left side blew. He got a step stool and yanked the blown Quad out of the wooden stand and jammed a new one in there in minutes, obviously very experienced at this. He lit it up again and the Decca ribbon tweeter on the left blew. Took him a few more minutes to replace the ribbon. Between these huge speakers was a matching wooden stand with 6 of John Curl's 25 watt Class A amps in two stacks. Very impressive. The sound was impressive, when it was working. In reality I do not think it was all that great impressive as it was. The Quads and Decca tweeters were not near capable of the volume the Harleys were.