I am interested to know whether you bought one system and stayed with it or you kept updating and improving your system. To get the ball rolling ……
I started in 1983 with:
JVC Cassette Deck. It was top-loading with VU meters, possibly the CD -1770
Trio KA 3500
B&W DM110s
Soon after I bought a Dual CS 505-2
All from Vickers HI-Fi in Gillygate, York.
The subsequent 40 year journey was fairly sensible until I took my Teachers’ Pension with its lump sum in 2017. Then it has been crazy, ever since I auditioned a recapped preloved Nait 3. Immediate addiction to The Naim Sound. I became rather obsessed with hi fi and caught a bad dose of upgraditis. Eventually arrived at:
Linn LP12, CDX2, ND5XS2, Lejonklou MM Gaia Phono Amp, Supernait 3, Dynaudio Contour 1.8 Mk 2.
I guess (perhaps wrongly) most folks here have listed their latest rigs. You could just ask what the first system was but I appreciate it is, for some, another opportunity to show off how much cash went into their latest acquisitions
For many, perhaps very much most of us, the first system was not a matter of “getting it right”, as in what we would have really liked to have, rather getting something we could afford. For many of us what we really wanted was far to expensive to contemplate, even secondhand, but the nature of ‘separates’ hifi made it a simple process to gradually improve as time passed and money became available, whether just earnings /savings or around lifes changes such as having families, homes and other commitments. My own first system was very much right at the time, sounded wonderful to my, and friends’, ears, and even initially* impressed a couple of hifi journalists who reviewed it. And being part DIY was far better than anything else I could have bought for tge hard-earned/saved £60 at age 15.
*Initially because of the music being played - they were rather more critical with some other music!
I didn’t want an expensive system in 1983, but I started working as a teacher and bought basic separates to play cassettes. After a year I could afford a turntable. And it sounded good to me. Job done. But The Sound Organisation opened in York in the late 80s and I passed it on my way to work. So I went in around 1990 and heard more expensive systems in a demonstration room with good acoustics. Wow! And then I wanted to upgrade one day.
My first proper hifi was a Sony PSX-800 turntable with XL44L MC cart, AT 630 MC step-up transformer into a JVC A-X2 amplifier and Wharfedale speakers. The Wharfedales were not great so were soon replaced by Monitor Audio R252s and the JVC amp by a NAD 3130. A Technics cassette deck joined the system briefly but a great deal on a new Nakamichi RX202 from my local hifi dealer saw that replaced in fairly short order. The arrival of CD saw the appearance of a Denon CD player closely followed by a Marantz (which I still have and it’s still working!).
My present system (and endgame other than anything forced by catastrophic failure) is MacMini+Audirvana as combined music store and renderer/ Chord DAVE DAC / Musical Fidelity A370 (class A power amp - no preamp) / PMC MB2 speakers.
I did have an intermediate endgame back in the 1990s: Thorens TD150 with Rega RB300 arm & AT-OC7 (I think) + Cambridge CD2 / Musical FidelityThe Preamp 2a /MF P170 power amp / IMF RSPM speakers. That lasted 10 years or so with no change, the only change before another 10 years of staticness being demise of CD player forcing a replacement, Shearne Audio Phase 7 ) very similar in sound quality/character to the Cambridge). The reasons for moves a decade later were more complex, including demise of that second CD player, abandonment of vinyl, advent of streaming, and small inheritance from the person who introduced me to music.
For my 21st birthday my Father wanted to propose me for membership of his Masonic lodge and pay my membership fees. I wanted no such thing (kids, eh?) and a hifi system was much more to my taste. So a Garrard deck, Rogers’ valve amp and Celestion Ditton speakers saw me through university and early years of marriage. Eventually … well that’s another story.
I am deeply impressed how people can remember all the HiFi components they owned over the years. I have owned so many different brands and types and most of them I can’t even remember.
My first was an inherited JVC receiver, Technics SL-D2 turntable, Akai tape deck and Bose 901s.
I had the 901s until they literally fell apart from age. I really wish I had kept the other bits too. Both the turntable and receiver had developed minor faults but my limited resources at the time couldn’t afford to have them fixed and I thought they were naff because they were silver (I was young). Today, I could have restored them myself.
My first step beyond that with my own money as an A&R Cambridge A60 second hand (which I still have) and travelled through a full Linn system, Yamaha, Onkyo micro system, back to 8 boxes of Naim Classic and eventually where I am now with bits of HiFi in many rooms from Naim, Luxman, TEAC, Denon, Omega, PMC, DALI and Qacoustics.
But I think a great deal about that early stuff. How we get rid of too much to climb the performance ladder and how wasteful it is to dump things for economic reasons.
My own first purchase was in 1987, a Rega Planar 3, Creek 4040s2, Royd A7’s from RPM in Sarf London.
(Before that I only had someone else’s third hand Trio sound centre, a single unit with the turntable to the left of the receiver, which I gave away to ex girlfriend.)
Plus an Aiwa Ad-470 cassette deck replacing a long owned Fisher unit from Richer London Bridge.
Then added a Rotel 820 CDP a couple of years later.
Rega p/x’d around year 2000 for my T+A G10s.
Sold my Creek only a few years ago after it was doing nothing since replaced by a nait 3r around 1998.
A7’s in the loft.
Tried to get the Aiwa going a little while back but it wasn’t happy.
The 820 is back on a shelf at the moment, just to provide an alternate approach to the Marantz SA-12 (though am about to swap Pioneer SD-703 in for it to see how stable platter mech. works as a transport into the Michi…)
