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When an A 'level student in 1977,  I had a 'rag-tag' lash up of a
system consisting of my brother's old Prinzsound amp and cassette deck
with no Dolby!

It had sliders and was a top-loader with piano key
style controls. The play button would only stay down by wedging a Bic
biro (it had to be Bic nothing else would work) between the play key
and the others!

I also had a Connoisseur BD1 turntable with 10" platter and idler wheel and some Shure cartridge.

The
amp had sliders too (crackly volume) and a wooden sleeve. The speakers
were some old Leak efforts with a metal trim around the grille.

For
about 18 months I worked Saturdays and holidays in a local hifi and
record shop (it sold TVs and the 'new' VHS recorders too) and it was
painful to sell all that gear but not be able to afford to buy any

I remember some 'stand-out' gear. An old Philips GA-212
turntable that was not on sale - too old by then and possibly a
stranded part exchange item - but it sounded great and was my chosen
'weapon' for demos of speakers and amps. No-one on the staff understood
this because they were all besotted by cheap, microphonic, plastic Sony
direct drives (none of the good Technics ones in our shop alas).  I had
a lot of success using that bouncy deck to sell amps and speakers and
receivers.

The other 'rage' in the late 1970s - apart from the
'rack system' - was the Music-centre. The best ones we stocked were JVC
and some monster Grundig thing that lit up like a disco. It had a good
Dual belt drive TT and Grundig versions of those Globe speakers that
JVC made. Very 'Abigails Party'.

Demis Roussos, Boney M's
Nightflight to Venus, Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene, Saturday Night Fever
and Dark Side of the Moon were all obligatory 'demo' albums -
regrettably - and I cannot listen to any of them ever again!

My
favourites out of the shop's regular products were the Celestion Ditton
44 loudspeakers with the bigger JVC amps like the JA-S44 or the
occasional Sansui SU-417. The JVC JA-S11 sounded pretty good with the
little Videoton Minimax 'speakers.

A little later and I
finished college, got a full-time job, and invested the whole of my
first monthly salary in a Sansui SR-222 Mk2 turntable with Grado F3+
cartridge, NAD3020 amplifier, Celestion County loudspeakers and
Sennheiser HD-414 headphones. (QED 42 strand cables as 79 strand would
not fit in the NAD's spring terminals and adjustable width metal
speaker stands that I removed the castors from.) The next month I got a
Technics cassette deck and threw away the Bic biro!

I christened the Sansui with John Martyn's 'Solid Air'.

 

Sansui AU-2200.
My first proper amplifier and still one of the nicest sounds I've had (and I've still got this amplifier in my study). Only 10 watts per channel but sounds much more powerful with a very fluid and musical sound. Brilliant.

I have hunted high and low but cannot find any pictures or even full details, but my first proper hifi was a Denon separates system of cassette deck, turntable and amp with Denon speakers. I got it out out of the music shop in Debenhams and I bought it because it was the best rated in Which? magazine. This was 1989. Prior to that I had survived with a Matsui cassette deck.

My first 'hi-fi' was a Pioneer midi system which I added a Sony cdp-35 to. Ithen upgraded to a proper hif-fi consisting of the old faves-

Nad 3020i amp, Dual turntable, Denon tu 260L tuner, Tannoy Mercury speakers on target stands and QED 79 strand speaker cable.

I also got a Rotel amp and Castle Trent speakers to go with a JVC nicam video in the lounge.

My first foray into surround sound was a 29" Toshiba dolby surround tv with a Thomson SVHS video. I had this in my bedroom and had to get widescreen versions of films, as the bottom of the tv was obscurd by the end of the bed when laid back against the headboard watching them.

I still have the Nad amp, turntable, tuner and castle speakers as a second system.

Back in 1979, a few months after starting work, determined to replace my home-made set-up my first proper kit consisted of the following:

JVC R-S5L receiver

Garrard Turntable (various cartridges over a few month period)

Hitachi cassette deck

Solavox SP25 MKII speakers

I always remember swapping cartridges with friends, looking for the best sound. Some of the caridges used were: Shure M115E, Goldring G800, Ortofon (can't remember the number) and Audio technica.

 

In the mid 80s I got a Fisher seperates system. I still have the turntable in the loft and my mum is still using the amp, tuner and speakers.

Not really hifi, more head-fi, but I remember buying and loving a set of Sennheiser HD320 headphones, with red foam.

Bought them from Zeus Audio in Belfast. I was in sixth form or maybe first year of university. Used them for maybe ten years, then they gave up having been stuffed in a bag too often 

Bought a huge panasonic luggable cd player, dual tape deck thing instead of cdp, amp and speakers a couple of years later, http://homepage2.nifty.com/bubbcasse-museum/panasonic/rxdt505.htm 

Probably the right decision at the time 

UForb might have been the first thing I played on it 

....Ok whilst I now can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday I can sadly (just about) remember every bit of hifi I ever owned.

The first? .....a BSR McDonald TT with a Shure cartridge + a Metrosound ST20 amp + a pair of Wharfedale Linton XP 3 loudspeakers as well as a Pioneer Cassette Deck (2020?)

The Metrosound died pretty quickly to be replaced by a Pioneer Receiver SX 535 (?) (ok I'm a bit fuzzy when it comes to model numbers!) A Pair of Tangent TM1 speakers replaced the Wharfedales.

Following a brief sojurn into Hitachi Music Centre territory (mea culpa) I upgraded to a Rega Planer 2 / Dynavector cartridge ...Quad 33/303 + a pair of Mission 737's and a Sansui cassette deck (model no forgotten again) QED speaker wire was my first HIFI Answers led tweak!

There's more (much more) when I've further ransacked the old memory bank!

When I moved into my first flat in the early 80's I assembled a rather eccentric system, I had swapped an old mono valve amp for an early 60's stereo Pye valve pre-power setup with matching fm tuner, polished copper fronts, no case, it just sat there glowing in the corner of the room

I bought a Dual deck and I had some American speakers KLH 20's I think, seemed like proper hifi at the time. Sounded better than my mates Technics set up but was very quiet. I would really one of those amps again though it was so warm and cozy.. not just the sound .. I'm not the amp would drive my BC1's though.  but if anyone has one they would part with let me know.

Steve. 

I'm in work, listening to my ages old 1994 Sony SRS-D2 2.1 powered speakers. No-one here and they are en-route to a friend for a free office speakers. They are noticeably uneven and lacking in detail. They stood in for the big panasonic mentioned above. They encouraged me to look at hifi for the first time about 6/7 years ago, so I have them to thank for that.

What I have now is a lot better. 

My first "proper" system consisted of a Rega Planar 2 with Linn K5 cart, a Technics SA-160L receiver (still in use in my dining room), a Philips CD-620 (I think) CD player, an Aiwa ADF-410 cassette deck and a pair of JPW Minims.

The only things that are still going are the Planar (sold about 18 months ago) and the Technics. I'm sure the JPWs would be, apart from the fact that both cones got punctured during a house move about 5 years ago.

That system saw me all though college, and the Technics still makes a good sound today (paired with an iPod dock and a pair of Eltax Symphony 6 speakers)...

I had a Hitachi CD player hooked up to a Fisher boom box for a couple of years, I must have been about 13/14.

The Hitachi CD was stolen when we were burgled, but they left the Fisher. I got a Sony 5-disc carousel player with the insurance payout.

Used this as it was up until getting my Hitachi boom box on my 18th birthday, which replaced the Fisher.

When I was about 21-ish, I junked it all (well, sold the 5-disc player to a mate, and still use the Hitachi boom box for my electronic drum kit) and bought a Sony mini system from Allders. It was one of those all-in-one-but-seperate systems (Had a ribbon cable as well as regular I/Cs. Can't remember the model number, but sure it had '50' in there somewhere, along with a bunch of letters). A few years after getting it, I stored the cassette & tuner away, just used the amp & CD.

Then in '02, at 28. I bought the stuff you can see in my sig (Except the 192, it was 72T back then). Flogged the Sony mini to a mate.

Early this month, bought a used 192 to replace my 72T.

Time will tell what other upgrades are around the corner....

Well my brother provided the music when I was little - a portable record player (one with a handle and a lid to carry it around) when I was seven; then a Fidelity Stereo for 50 quid when we were teenagers, and then a Sanyo (or something) music centre, and those were my sources until I left home at eighteen. Then at Uni I discovered all these people with Dual 505s and Rega Planar 2s and 3s, which was when i started buying WHF - ended up with s/h 505/II Deluxe and Creek CAS4040 with some new AR18BXs, and later a Denon DRM07 tape deck, which I bought with one week's wages from the Safeway Deli Counter - all sitting on a white Target rack...

Well my first 2 'systems' don't count. Aged 9 I got a Pye 9015 mono radio cassette for Christmas. I really liked it but hankered after something better.

A little reading of Which magazine aged 11 and I realised I needed a stereo system with seperate speakers and my tape player must have Dolby. I saved £50 from my paper round and my parents coughed up the remaining £99 for a Ferguson Studio 100D music centre in 1980. This had to stay in the lounge so my parents could better monitor my volume and stop me from staying up all night. I knew deep down it sounded nasty but tried not to worry.

Then aged 14 I had a revelation. I had my fist drugs experience whilst listening to Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' on the first real hifi I'd ever heard. Ariston RD80, Quad 33/405, Quad ESL63's. This experience changed my life. Now I knew what I was aiming at.

I threw all my money at my first proper hifi. A Marantz SD220 tape deck, Rotel RA840 amp and Sennheisser HD410 headphones (£185). I couldn't afford to buy vinyl or speakers at that point so had to tape other peoples albums for a couple of years.

Over the next 2 years I built a pair of little 2 way speakers from Tandy parts. Then bought a pair of Monitor Audio R252s and a Rotel RP830 turntable with Ortofon VMS15E cartridge. This was my set up when I finished school in 1984.

I junked the tape deck 4 years ago, my Mum still uses the amp occasionally, the Monitor Audios are in my cupboard, the home made speakers were swapped for a second tape deck in the mid 80's, I don't recall the fate of the turntable and the headphones were only replaced a couple of months ago.