Your First System

Fun thread. My first "real" component system ~1970:

Minerva receiver - couldn't afford the big names
AR turntable with Signet cartridge - still have
Soundesign 8 track player/recorder - yeah baby
Utah speakers - honking big mothers with horn tweeters

Coming from Denmark my first system was truly a designer show piece consisting of Bang & Olufsen Beomaster 1200 receiver with a Beogram 1200 turntable. http://arcamadeus.simplesite.com/305336804
These components have been on permanent display at the Museum for Modern Art in New York for over 40 years.

There was a Sony outlet that sold refurbished equipment in Kenosha, WS-about an hour away from my parent's house. In high school my first component was Sony's first Dolby Pro-Logic receiver. I remember it required a separate amp to drive the center channel which was kind of ridiculous and therefore never used for surround. That drove my dad's Sony speakers from the 70's for a few months until, with the help of my dad, I did a 12 month free financing deal on a pair of giant Cerwin Vega speakers with 15" woofers and a heavy pair of Monster Speaker cables. All this time I was using a Sony D-35 Discman (second only to their flagship D- 555). Within the next year or so I bought a Sony ES single cassette deck and the very first 100 disc changer Sony made which was much more well made than subsequent "mega changers". With the exception of the receiver all the equipment is still in working order and cosmetically almost flawless. My brother-in-law re-foamed the speakers and is using them for his "party house" and the rest sits in retirement in my basement much to my wife's discontent. I got years of service from this equipment which was mixed and matched in HT systems and secondary rigs as I built up my 2 channel main rig.

During the time that a graduate course credit was $35 at Penn State, I walked into Watson Equipment Sales (WES) in State College, PA, and was soon drooling over an array of speakers and integrated amps. I took home to my apartment a Pioneer SX-626 receiver and a pair of Altec 887a's, to be matched with a used AR XA turntable. It was that first term that my roommate introduced me to post-Peter Green, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac. When my apartment was ransacked over Christmas break I lost the turntable, but had the wisdom to move the receiver and speakers to a friend's for safe keeping.

I built an Eico integrated amp kit,KHL model 17's,and a Garrard syncrolab and Statton 500e cartridge.I just looked in my cartridge box yesterday and the Statton is still there!My brother built his Eico which he still has.Wow,that was back in the mid to later 1960's.I still have LP's I bought from the 60's like my Doors Soft Parade.Somehow a box of about a 100 45's survived all the moves.