Ah, the lovely Sony TC-D3/WM-D3. I still have mine along with a WM-DC2. They both still work and sound pretty good, although I very rarely use them these days. I did however recently use the dinky little stereo Sony microphone that I bought to use with the TC-D3. I used it about 18 months ago to record a demo run voiceover for the Uniti Core Setup video. And then it stopped working. Steve Sells very kindly offered to take a look at it, but it stayed broken - I think it had its chips…
i had several pocket recorders after, all digital, in the 500 eur price range, but none could match this sony cassette recorder.
Perhaps some digital recorders of 1k or more can record better, but difficult to find information on that. ( for stereo live concerts recordings).
This was my first proper source, a Technics RS 263 AUSD cassette deck, which my parents gave me (they must have spent all their savings, or bought it on HP as I recall it being about £109 or so). I played through a BSR turntable / amplifier unit I had. I pretty much wore the head out, but it gave many years of enjoyment. I rather wish I hadn’t sold it, just for sentimental reasons.
Photo from Internet, not my unit.
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After changing my amp to a Yamaha, and TT to a pioneer p112d, I added this which was my first real bit of HiFi. Cost £425 back in 1976, and used every penny I had and more. Px’ed it against my active Saras a few years later which was a mistake as I liked the r2r so much. Bought one of an auction site while I was in Brazil and had it fully serviced and it is now in mint condition - cost me a lot more than I paid for the first one 
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Ah, my father had one similar which I adopted, not sure he saw it much… the speakers doubled up as the case which bolted on to protect the delicate parts in transit. I think I might have dismantled them at some point as I wanted the drive units in a nice box. It was a dismal failure.
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My first amp Trio KA-1500
My first cassette deck JVC KD720
Turntable was Garrard SP25 and speakers were Acoustic Research AR7x
All sounded fantastic to me back in the 70’s. First upgrade was from the SP25 to STD305D
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Wow, 20 years ago, looks like we were running identical systems. (Well, apart from the Mana.)
20 years on, I’m still running the same system.
At Uni., my first “I’ve left home” system was an Armstrong 521 amp, a B & O 1200 deck, (which, at the time, I thought to be the coolest thing ever), and a pair of Wharfedale Dovedale speakers … sonic bliss! … well, allowing for the foolishness of youth.
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Prompted by a retrospective review of them in February’s edition of Hi-Fi News - a (stock) picture of the Primare 928s I ran in my main system until 3 or 4 years ago. I was very sorry to see them go.
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I also used to have one of these, come to think of it I think it’s stashed somewhere so must root it out - Goldring Lenco GL75
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My first amp too. I seem to remember one reviewer refering to the Alba UA900 as the poor man’s A60.
I’m with you on that B&O deck, I spent hours ogling it, thought it was the most amazing thing ever.
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My first CD player, it was one of the first second generation models. I was so excited by CD I bought two before I even had a player (Essential Jean Michel Jarre and Dire Straits).
Rega into a Myst TMA3 into Wharfedale Diamond 504 sometime in the 1980’s (internet pictures) sounded fantastic.
very nice, specially in the middle ( the pre?).
I rather like this thread. It’s fun seeing all this vintage equipment. Yesterday I posted a picture of what was my first proper source, a Technics RS 263 AUSD cassette deck. I’ve searched the Internet and found photographs of the components which comprised the rest of my first ‘proper’ HiFi system.
A Technics SL20 turntable which I bought secondhand from my cousin:
I purchased the amplifier from Lasky’s, a Sony TA70, to which I later added a ST70 tuner, which performed remarkably well with just a ribbon aerial:
For a number of years I used some homemade speakers (for which I won a school prize for woodwork!) based an dual concentric cones. These were replaced with a pair of Omar Goring loudspeakers which I used some of my student grant (remember those?) to purchase from Radford HiFi in Bristol:
I cannot remember what happened to all these bits, but at the time they provided really enjoyable sound and allowed my to expand my musical knowledge. Most importantly, girls seemed to like the music this system made, and that’s what really mattered!
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Is this the famous metal TDK which costs a fortune to buy nowadays?
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OK, tape geek hat is on…
TDK MA-R - a C-90, I think, as indicated by the green removable record tabs (The C-60 had red tabs IIRC). The metal inner shell is pretty cool and always gave the cassette a nice hefty feel. However… It looked nice but didn’t really help with azimuth or scrape flutter or modulation noise (which was often worse than on the standard TDK MA equivalent). Also, the tape inside was standard MA, although thanks to sales being small, what you often bought was tape that was an older generation to the MA equivalent on sale beside it. So, nice to look at and feel in the hand though it was, what you were buying was a prettier but potentially slightly poorer performing version of TDK MA. Oh, and you were also paying a big premium for the metal shell. However, TDK MA was a superb Metal tape in the early days, essentially the same tape as Nakamichi ZX, and up there with the best such as Fuji Metal, Maxell MX, and Teac MDX.
Where things got better was with the introduction of TDK MA-XG. Here you got a similar but slightly redesigned metal shell with MA-X tape stock inside, which was a double coated metal tape brought in to compete against the new ‘Super Metals’ started by Sony with Metal-ES.
I still have a few sealed MA-Rs and quite a few MA-XGs of different vintages. They’re collectible now and a nice bit of nostalgia, but I doubt I’ll be opening them up anytime soon. Here’s most of the lovely TDK C-90 cassette lineup for the UK from 1982 (only the basic D “Dynamic” Cassette is not shown here)…
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Ah a man after my own heart. I may have not taken much to vinyl but tapes I do love. I was brought up with tapes and I love that sound. I do have about 700 tapes back at my parents’ house in storage. Now and again I do get one out and play them. Quite a few TDK, Sony, Maxell, BASF, Denon and other brands I can’t recall.
Time to bring home that Technics stack and relive some memories i think. Although in my youth I was quite heavily into Heavy Metal and I suspect I might not be able to handle the sound of some of the albums nowadays (talking about black and death metal albums). 
I could not recall my first TT until I saw this photo in your post - that was it! I remember the angled front to the tonearm platform and the black knob behind it so well now that I see it! I am sure it was kind of mediocre compared to the high-end stuff now, but they were kind of “sexy” in their own way.