When did it all start?

It all started when I put in my own after market 8 track unit with speakers into a van I bought. At that time it was one of the best sounding units in my home town. I eventually put some into my friends cars and the rest is history. Then someone said you should hear the home equipment. Set the hook and crank me in. Many years later I still get a kick out of this crazy hobby. But now I look for new artist or rediscover old ones.
See Ya!

Nrchy, I realize it may have seemed otherwise at the time to an 11-year-old, but by '72 both The Beatles and S&G had been broken up going on a couple of years... :-)

It all started when I bought a Linn, in 73, and heard old Quads well driven. Still have a Linn as a spare and would have old Quads if I had space for a second system. What I heard then is not so far away from what I hear now.. and it was far less work and expense.

I was nine years old (1970) and won a contest selling the most new newspaper subscriptions door-to-door in my neighborhood. I won one of those all in one crappy systems but I loved it, listened to music night and day in my room. Over the next 4 years I cut lawns, baby-sat, shoveled snow, painted houses, etc and saved my cash. Every Saturday I'd go downtown Montreal to buy records and kept passing by this small audio shop with some cool looking gear in the window. One day I passed by and it was quiet so I wandered in so see/hear what this stuff was. The owner was a young guy and enthusiastic about audio and spent a fair amount of time educating me on what gear he sold, what made one amp better than another, speakers (electrostatic vs. boxes), you name it. Quite something, taking the time to educate a 13 year old kid with a couple of used records under his arm and unlikely to have any money. He carried Quad, Thorens, Mission, B&W, and a new product called New Acoustic Dimensions (NAD). Great guy, Claude got me hooked on audio for life. My first real system was the venerable Thorens TD147 with stock arm and Supex 900 pickup, Mission 700 speakers, and a NAD3020 integrated. Let's just say the time he took to share his audio passion with a young kid sure paid off for him over the years. I still patronize Sound Ideas and we became good friends over the years.

Beatles? S&G? 1972? What were you smoking, there, at 11? Being 11 in '72 and 11 in '64--I was watching the Beatles, on Ed Sullivan, singing I Want to Hold Your Hand. Man, was that something. Shindig, Hullabaloo, the Smothers Brothers. Here I go again. peace, warren