The receiver was my intro to HiFi! What say you?

@bigwave1 I bought a pair of Bose 401's from Crazy Eddie.

Like @motown-l , I started audiophilia with a Pioneer SX-525 and an idler. In my case a Dual 1214 with a Stanton cart of some sort. This was in 1973. Speakers were Marantz 4G, which I doubled and stacked a year later. Then Koss headphones. I loved that system for more than a decade—before early stages of nervosa set in!

Crazy Eddie, a great bait and switcher. 

In the Summer of ’68 (how many here were then not yet born? 😊 ) I put together my first system: a Garrard SL55 with a Shure M44e cartridge, a Fisher X-100A integrated tube amp, and Acoustic Research 4ax loudspeakers. Not a bad place to start.

The following year I replaced the Garrard with an Acoustic Research XA table with a Shure M91e cartridge.

Three years later I discovered Stereophile (from an ad in the back of Audio Magazine iirc), and the race was on! In ’73 I got myself what many audiophiles were getting: Magneplanar Tympani’s bi-amped with ARC Dual 75 and Dual 51 power amps and an SP-3 pre-amp, a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 with a Decca arm and cartridge, and a Revox A77 Mk.3. I didn’t care for the Decca arm (I dislike unipivots), soon replacing it with an SME 3009 Improved. I could live with that system today. Actually, I now have Tympani’s and London (Decca) cartridges, but evolved versions of each.

@motown-l Your dorm system sounds a lot like mine.  I had KLH Model 32 loudspeakers, which were the lowest priced KLH speaker made at the time.  I paid $80/pair and that was stretching it for me.  I had a Heathkit AJ-14 FM tuner I built from kit, a used Dynaco SCA-35 integrated tube amp, and a Garrard Type A record changer with a Shure M3D cartridge.

The Dyna endured a beer spill at a party one time.  Flash, flash went the tubes!  A couple tube replacements later it worked great.