1973

Bought my SAE Mark VI tuner, which I still have and use!

Graduated college in 1973. Got great job, bought a red Datsun 260Z! 
Upgraded my speakers from Corals to Bozaks, got a Citation II  preamp and an HK amp, AKai reel to reel, Linn Sondek TT. Yep Life was good!  And girls galore!

I was serving in the military in Northern Ireland in 1973 during the "Troubles".  Crazy time, checkpoints and body searches everywhere, bombs going off every night.

My first decent system was my refuge, along with some Guinness and the occasional bit of hashish.  Sansui SP-100 speakers, Dual 1229 turntable, Sansui AU-555 and TU-555 amp and tuner.  

Loved that system, lost it the divorce from my first wife.

I still remember finding out that Duane Allman was a sideman at Muscle Shoals and had a ton of music in additon to the Allman Brother Band.  This was before the Anthology release of his studio work.  Heard him on Push Push by Herbie Mann and the search was on after that.

Winter 73.  In my room, in a smoky haze with a couple of friends.  Playing Cheech and Chong’s “Sister Mary Elephant” and trying to figure out the highest volume we could play it before amp went into protection.  

We heard her say “SHUTUP!” quite a few times before amp stopped for good.

It it was fun while it lasted.

I was in my second year of college at UCSB and had earned enough money working at a picture frame/headshop the previous summer to buy a used BMW 1600 for all of $1,200. But the hi-fi bug bit hard, and because I had my priorities straight (and my roommate had a perfectly fine VW bus), I decided to sell the BMW and put the money toward a new stereo system.

Getting all the money for the BMW wasn’t easy. A guy showed up who offered me $600 and (I swear) his monkey. I explained that, while I had no aversion to monkeys, money wasn’t thick on the ground, and as students, we were often reduced to rice and canned tuna by the third week of the month. A monkey would starve living with us. We finally settled on $1,200 and no monkey; a better deal for all parties, human and simian.

After much angst deciding between unwieldy Tympanis and only slightly less manageable Quads, I bought a system from Ken Kreisel at Jonas Miller in Los Angeles: Quad ESL 57s, 33 preamp and 303 amp, and an AR turntable. Certainly, it was the best-sound coming from any college apartment.

Funnily, I still have a pair of Quad 57s (rebuilt, of course), which remain as magical today as they were in the tie-die days of Santa Barbara.