My introduction into high end gear was hearing my first electrostatic transducer: the RTR tweeters employed in the ESS TranStatic I Loudspeaker (of which I now own a pair). I then in 1971 heard the Infinity Servo-Static I, and saw (but not heard) my first ARC products: the SP-2C pre-amp and D-100 (dual chassis) power amp.
The following year (1972) I assembled my first high end system: Magneplanar Tympani T-I’s, bi-amped with ARC D-50 and D-75 power amps, an SP-3 pre-amp, a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 fitted with an SME 3009 arm and Decca Blue cartridge. This was the exact same system I heard Bill Johnson demo when he visited and installed the system in the listening room of his newest ARC dealer: Walter Davies in Livermore California (later known for his outstanding line of Last record preservation products).
It was in Stereophile that I read the first reviews of all the above (in issues that reside in my library). Though I time-after-time see Harry Pearson and his TAS Magazine credited with creating "the high end", before the first issue of TAS was published J. Gordon Holt had already reviewed the ARC SP-2C, the Dual 50, the SP-3, the Dual 75, the Magneplanar Tympani T-I, and the Decca Blue.
In the 1960’s JGH had reviewed the QUAD ESL, The KLH 9, Marantz Model 9, and all the other pieces of state-of-the-art gear, before Pearson introduced the rather snobbish-sounding term (to my ears anyway) "high end". I prefer Holt’s term: "perfectionist hi-fi". The former implies higher price ipso facto affords higher sound quality, the latter doesn’t.