Retired, physically limited, home too much, too much time on the computer obviously. Beats watching the news.
I resemble that sentence (grin).
Additionally, as mentioned by "dsper",
"In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" was one of my first album purchases. Later, I saw the Iron Butterfly in concert with Stepenwolf -- good time!
In my pre-teen years, my fascination with improving sound found
me buying raw speakers and trying to installing them in empty car model
boxes. Before installing the drivers, I would poke in sound holes and spray paint the boxes. Along with aesthetics, the paint stiffened the boxes. Obviously,
I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
But they sounded better than the speaker installed in my Hallicrafters
short wave radio. Placing the in-box speakers in various containers like waste baskets, seemed to also improve the sound (go figure)!
I lusted for my own in-bedroom record player. But alas, my dad thought the console stereo
in the living room was sufficient. For
some reason my dad allowed an AIWA 3” portable reel-to-reel recorder to be bought. I used that to record songs from AM radio.
Additionally, I convinced my dad to allow me to tear into out TV. My plan was to patch into the TV's speaker wires to directly connect my AIWA recorder (a direct connect was much better than using a lapel mic). The goal was to record the Beatles' U.S. premier on Ed Sullivan. It worked like a champ.
In high school and college, I poured over the stereo magazines of the time. I found
myself sending in the manufacturer card at the back of the magazine’s
to request literature. I couldn’t afford any equipment. But boy did I
have fun dreaming about Marantz receivers with their beckoning glowing displays
and FM tuning wheels and McIntosh's gorgeous blue glowing displays seen at a local electronic store. But both, particularly McIntosh, were unobtanium.
Still having only the AIWA,
I met a fellow student who returned from the Navy
bearing a Pioneer quad system he bought while overseas. For obvious reasons, I sought him out as a roommate.
He introduced me to many new groups and albums; not the least which were Jethro
Tull’s “Aqualung” and The Moody Blues “In Search of the Lost Chord” and Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album using the "Emerson, Lake & Palmer" name. All 3 remain some of
my favorites, with the tune "Lucky Man" being frequently used as an audition track.
Within a year after acquiring my first job following college and married, I saved up
enough for my first system. It consisted
of ESS Heil AMT-3, “Rockmonitor’s”, a
JVC Integrated 80w/ch amplifier and Dual 1229 TT with a Shur cart. I still remember hearing Pink Floyd's DSOTM at the audio dealers. After I got home, I called and asked what the heck was the album I heard and the rest as is said, is history...
After this, I
just listened to music and remained with the same ESS Heil speakers for many years. A Tandberg reel-to-reel was added. But when we were burglarized, the Tandberg was taken,
along with the JVC Integrated. A Revox
B77 replaced the Tandberg and a Phase Linear 400 amp and 4000 "Autocorrelation"
preamplifier replaced the JVC Integrated.
Thereafter, with family expenses, equipment stayed
static for quite some time. In middle age with more disposable income, I jumped back into the highend audio world with vigor.
Since then, I’ve
acquired many different items, finding several small boutique manufacturers in the process. But I have not strayed far from the original Heil AMT (Air Motion Transformer) sound, moving to panels and then electrostats.
