Reply With QuoteIn the early 70s we chose Which?'s best buy separates: Goodmans tuner-amp (when Goodmans was actually good); Akai double cassette player and huge Goodman's speakers. No pics remain, sadly, but it sounded great.
This was my first rig way back when a student in the late 80s, an Aiwa HSPX101 professional walkman and a pair of Nakamichi SP7 headphones. Sounded really good together 8)
found some pics online:
In the early 70s we chose Which?'s best buy separates: Goodmans tuner-amp (when Goodmans was actually good); Akai double cassette player and huge Goodman's speakers. No pics remain, sadly, but it sounded great.
Fisher micro from tottenham court road. 99£. :rock:
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
First 'proper' set up was....
Dais turntable with a Syrinx PU2 arm and a Koetsu cartridge, Myst Pre-power amps and a Celestion SL6 (active conversion) speakers on lead filled bases :D
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
If were talking seperates' it was a dual cs505 tt, nad amp and wharfedale speakers (cs3's I think they were...)
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
After two second-hand record players, it was an Amstrad special. After that, a Sony receiver replaced the Amstrad amp. After that it was all kinds of everything for the next thirty-five years. Wish I still had the Sony receiver.
My first hi-fi was a Aiwa NSX540.
Since then i've spent far too much on hi-fi gear.
I've currently got an old Harmon/ Kardon HK6550 amp, Naim CD5X CD player and a pair of Dynaudio Audience 52SE speakers.
A reel-to-reel which incorporated an amp, and had some speakers that clipped on to the front, with the reels removed. I think it was a Tandberg. (Sort of hifi, I guess.) I got it when I was at RM A School (Radioman A School). It lasted until I replaced it with a (large) cassette unit, which was easier to use when I was on board ship.
Best wishes,
Bob
12th Birthday present.....loved it at the time though :?
:shock:Originally Posted by Albellisimo
12th Birthday present.....
I was happy to get a new pair of Sears and Roebuck (square toe) cowboy boots for my 12th birthday!
Best wishes,
Bob
Garrard SP25 Mk 2 with Sure M75EJ-2, Amstrad IC2000 amp and Leak Sandwich 150 speakers, (I still have those speakers in the loft).
The Amstrad amp was very much under rated, as was the FM tuner from them I bought the following year, (1972). The SP25 was the weak link in the system at the time.
Bought a Hi-Fi set-up in preference to renting a TV when Lynn and I got married - important to get priorities right from the start. :wink: :lol:
Didn't know much about acoustics at the time, but had the speakers on fire bricks away from walls which made a significant difference from my mates bookshelf mounted speakers.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
Sanyo personal stereo,
10 th birthday
One of these but in silver
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0703998428
The usual solo return to school from the far east couldn't come quick enough to show up all those mono fm radio owners who'd been lording over the rest of us for a couple of years
Cracking idea for a thread :mrgreen: I had a Hitachi TRK 3D50E for Christmas I think, must have been around 9-10 years old?
Still got mine, Pioneer A400 Amp, Rotel 965BX Discreet CD, B&W Solid Speakers
I got my first 'seperates' system (sort of) when I went to Uni in 1984, a Sony FH-3. It was still working 25 years later :lol:
Pic courtesy of audioidiots.com
now you're bringing back some memories. Mine was a
FISHER PH-W546L twin tape ghetto blaster, perfect for recording the top forty :P
Bought from the first branch at Richer Sounds at London Bridge. Tiny shop. Dual CS505-1 turntable, Rotel amp and AR speakers.
14th birthday present - I wanted of set of drums but there was no way I could get it, so I settled for
Marantz 2238B receiver
Kenwood KD-550 'table
Teac A-300 cassette deck
Bose 501 speakers
Koss headphones
I've got fond memories of that system :drunken:
Certainly do... 15 years old
British Fidelity/Musical Fidelity Integrated Amp
Rotel Turntable
Rotel Tuner
B&W Speakers
8)
What, no tape deck? Dude, how did you cope without one? :D
Sharp GF-9494 a few years later as a "second system". Jeez I caught the bug early :D
So eighties, and it even had a phono stage. I still have it, and it still works as it should.
Borrowed pic, obviously.
Analog VU meters - now that is Old Skool :headbang:
Back to the 70s
Pioneer PL 12D Turntable with Shure cartridge
Rotel tuner/amp
Wharfedale Speakers
A cheap and nasty mains 8 track player, (had loads of 8 tracks for the car at that time)
After some saving...Revox reel to reel tape deck
Many, many upgrades since.
Garrard SP25, Rotel amp and Goodmans Mezzo 3 speakers. Listened to it for hours on end.
Mine, at the tender age of 14 was:
Connoisseur BD1 turntable, came as a kit and built by my own fair hand and fitted in a home made plinth my brother-in-law built.
Fitted with with an Audio Technica AT1009 tonearm (desperately want SME 3009 but way over budget) and the ubiquitous at the time Ortofon FF15e cartridge.
Amplifier was a NAD 3030 (still have it somewhere...)
Speakers were initially Videoton Minimax, replaced later when I found a cheap deal on some Wharfedale Linton 3xps.
Speaker wire was some 15amp cooker wire - even in those days (1978) we knew bell wire was bad!
Anyone remember any of that kit?
I did a gazillion hours labouring for the local bricky to buy this stuff :)
^ ^
I do remember that kit.
Dude, we're old.
Have I said that before? :D
yes mate, I think you have.
No arguments from me :D
Pioneer PL112d deck , Trio Amp, Celestion Ditton speakers
Replaced in the 80s with NAD 3020, Marantz CD, Nakamichi cassette and AR speakers.....
Which I still have
I bought this with my first month's salary in the late 70s. It took every penny. £100.
Loved it.
Going back to 1992, mine was
Rega Planar 2 turntable
Nad 3020e amp (I think thats the right model - it was the entry level NAD at the time)
Yamaha cassette deck
I have forgotten what the speakers were. :( Wharfdale maybe
Garrard SP25 turntable, Amstrad 8000 amp and Wharfedale speakers.
Feeling really nostalgic reading this. I recognise a lot of the equipment quoted.
Anyone remember Laskys, the hi-fi chain with several branches in the late 70s/early 80s? My first proper hi-fi came from the Sheffield branch in 1981.
Garrard DD455 deck (direct drive was the way to go at the time). Nikko amp (30wpc), Nikko cassette deck, plus an old tuner given to me by my sister (I think it was a Samsung dating from ca 1975). Speakers were Wharfedale Laser 80s.
The whole set-up cost just under £400. Got my first credit card to pay for it, then spent most of the 80s getting into debt and living just beyond my means :( .
I moved house in late 1988 and cleared my debts with the new mortgage. First thing I bought for the house was a new hi-fi system, Marantz stuff including a CD player and a Thorens deck which I still use occasionally.
Sadly, I think hi-fi's going out of fashion. There's a generation of youngsters who simply don`t understand; they think everything sounds the same provided it's got lots of bass and it's loud. Maybe it's the crap they call music that's to blame. Try explaining the benefits of CD over MP3 downloads and their young faces just go blank.
Paul
Perhaps not all. At the end of term I went to a concert arranged by the college music society. The orchestra was entirely made up of students, mostly ones not doing a music degree, the conductor was a student, and the audience was largely made up of students. The programme included Mozart and Benny Goodman. I suspect that there is as much variation amongst young folks as amongst old folks.
They do trade off quality for convenience. But so do most folks, e.g., consider the number of people who use compact cameras.[1]
(When I have drinks parties, I play jazz, and some odds and ends. They like the jazz, even relatively complicated jazz, but don't care for some of the odds and ends like Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. :))
Best wishes,
Bob
PS 1. I certainly trade them off.
RLF
Sharp GF-9494 a few years later as a "second system". Jeez I caught the bug early :D
So eighties, and it even had a phono stage. I still have it, and it still works as it should.
Borrowed pic, obviously.
I'm sure someone said Hi-Fi .. ? ;)
Great Thread!
My first Hi-Fi was a GEC A1800 system, bought around 1980 with earnings from my paper round!
This is the only picture I can find on the WEB. My system also had the turntable and speakers.
Believe it or not, I am still using the reveiver. It is still going strong, used almost every day after more than 30 years. I use it as the amp for my computer system, with the output from the sound card fed through the AUX connection on the amp and now output to a pair of Sony speakers.
hell yeah, I remember my first hi fi!
...
I still have it :shock:
I got the tape deck serviced in 1999 or 2000.
It finally died some seven years later.
ast month, during some living room rage, I threw my daughter's baby deck chair around and it landed inside (yes, inside) the tuner.
That was silly of me.
Looks like it is about time to move on to something new.
My dad bought the pioneer set when we moved to london in 1983, then I bought a mixer but only had one turn table to play with, so I then bought the two boy technics with my first internship money (110 pounds each in 1990) and then when I moved back to Italy I bought the gemini mixer with 4 entries and a mike jack and a jack for the light. It was dented so I got it at a good price one million two hundred thousand lire.
no idea how I came up with that money as a student....
anyway, here's the pics
you can see the hole crash in the tuner :(
and the whole thing in a ikea outfit
the original pioneer cabinet is currently being used by my parents in their toilet with loads of toiletries inside, instead of records and stuff.
oh, bad boys by wham, one of the first 12 inch singles my dad borught over from london bevore I moved there.
the side b is superb and really funky.
Sharp GF-9494 a few years later as a "second system". Jeez I caught the bug early :D
So eighties, and it even had a phono stage. I still have it, and it still works as it should.
Borrowed pic, obviously.
I'm sure someone said Hi-Fi .. ? ;)
Someone also said "second system". Besides, strictly speaking, very little of that stuff was hi-fi. It just produced high decibels and we had fun with it.
Ah yes, in common with many others I had a Garrard SP25 Mk5 (utter crap), amplified by a Sony TA242 amp (pretty crap) into Pioneer CS363 speakers (crap). In fairness, I was still at school and paid for these out of my paper-round and they were the cheapest seperates I could find at the time.
I caught upgradeitis very quickly though, and about a year later I had a Thorens Turntable, Nytech amp and Mordaunt Short speakers which was much better.
This thread is taking me back. My first job, at 15, was at a high-end audio shop in town. I worked for credit which is how I had the best system in my school... by a landslide! 8)
We sold a lot of Linn, Naim, Creek, PS Audio, Kyocera, Mordaunt Short, B&W, Spica and Canton.
I need to re-create a nice system now!
Pioneer, something like this but with a cassette deck, and I paid extra for Wharfedale speakers....
F.T.F.A.
God knows what the model number was, I've had a look on ebay and can't find it, but it was a Sony combined amp, tuner and tape deck, with a separate turntable, and a set of 3 foot high FAL speakers that weighed a ton.
4 X 100 watts, that used to get turned up to number 11 during the heady days of the NWOBHM........... my neighbours must have loved me
I had on of those jeessssssss its 25 years ago ish :shock:Cracking idea for a thread :mrgreen: I had a Hitachi TRK 3D50E for Christmas I think, must have been around 9-10 years old?
The boom box . Wog box < You could not call um that these days...
Graphic Equalizers , Bass boost :lol: WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT !
12th Birthday present.....
That was my first 'hifi' too,from around 1984.I used to play Prince's Purple Rain LP on it at full blast and my mum and dad regretted buying it me in the end!
My first hi-fi consisted of a Thorens TS166 Mk2 turntable with an Ortofon stylus, a Technics amp (can't remember the model no), a Philips CD player (again can't remember the mode no), an Akai cassette deck (no remember model no :() and a pair of Audan 4 floor standing speakers.
Those were the days :)
EDIT: I still have all the above except for the speakers somewhere gathering dust :)
Certainly do. Spent many an hour in there drooling and listening to stuff in the late 70's. Think they had a small shop near the foot of the Moor at first but moved to much bigger premises just down from the City hall. My interest in hi-fi started in my early teens and it wasn't until I left home in '81 that I cobbled together my first 'proper' system.
Pioneer PL12D turntable with Nagaoka cartridge (bought from Quadraphenia near the river/Brewer On The Bridge pub)
Sansui amplifier (whatever happened to them?)
Kef Coda speakers.
Turntable and speakers got sold to my brother and the Sansui is in the loft I think.
First set up B&O Beolab 5000, Beogram 3000 turntable, Goodmans Magnum K2 speakers.
Rod
Armstrong 626 tuner amp, Garrard AP76 with a Shure M55E cartridge, Wharfdale speakers, and Sennheiser HD424 headphones. The "HiFi music stand" was three planks supported by 12 house bricks which I thought was so cool.
Bring back the 70's I say 8)
grant
Strewth, that takes me back. Before I had one of these it was a white plastic deck and speakers from Comet - only worked with a coin stuck on the stylus arm.12th Birthday present.....
Rega Planar 2 with A&R P77 cartridge, NAD amp and Mission 710 speakers.
Since then, an inordinately expensive and numerous mix of components.
I tried to remember all the speakers I've owned and got to 23 pairs before I gave up!
My 1st set was TRIO seperates, still got the Amp, the radio, tape player and truntable now long gone although i still think i have the B&O speakers in the loft. All i remember was it cost a fortune at the time
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