…let me wax poetic for a bit about my very first hi-fi system.
The Sony TA-5650 was my first hi-fi amplifier, purchased with some high school graduation money. I'd owned "stereos" throughout my school years, but this was my first real piece of high end gear. Utilizing the then-new V-FET (vertical field effect transistor) technology, it produced a sound that could only be described as delicious. Unfortunately, it had the rather annoying penchant for self-destruction, that I've written about previously.
I purchased these Infinity loudspeakers at the same time I got the Sony amp. A good friend in high school had gotten a pair a year earlier and we both liked them, even though they were at the low-end of the Infinity lineup. I remember several things about the purchase. Firstly, the sales people were like, "You're putting these with that Sony?!" Secondly, the salesman had a blond mustache I wanted to take a ride on, and lastly, I'd had a pair on layaway for a month. When I went to pick them up, they told me I'd have to take the display models because they didn't have any stock. I wasn't having any of that bullshit. "They're on layaway. You will find a new pair."
Miraculously, a brand new in-box pair appeared in the back room. Sometimes causing a scene is necessary.
I'd been lusting after my friend's SL-1300 since it first appeared in his bedroom in 1973. It was a beautiful piece of tech, but sadly was no longer being manufactured when I actually had the funds to buy my own. It had been replaced with an upgraded version, the SL-1600 (which was, actually, so much better in so many respects). I kept this for several years, until I gave it to my sister after upgrading to this:
Another beautiful, cutting-edge piece of tech that had issues. This is still probably my favorite Technics series ever produced, despite it's long-standing issues with the tonearm lift mechanism. I still have the one I purchased off eBay in the early 2000s whose arm was permanently repaired, although I'm not currently using it, having acquired a SL-1200mk2 about two years ago.
I got this beauty out of frustration after the 1300mk2 had been sitting in the shop for over three months. Again, I had wanted to buy perhaps the all-manual version of the 1300mk2 (the 1500mk2) and then sell it when I got the 1300mk2 out of repair, but like the 1300/1600 debacle, the line had been discontinued. So this was a decent, relatively inexpensive alternative. This is the one table that stayed with me until I foolishly sold all my vinyl after moving to San Francisco in the mid 80s.
This was my first cassette deck, finally acquired in 1984. It was good, not great, but certainly served its purpose. Even with the advent of CDs, minidisc, MP3s and streaming, I do still kind of miss cassettes. They were wondrous things in their day. At one point I think I had a hundred or so mix tapes…
I think I still have maybe a handful squirreled away in a box somewhere, but nothing to play them on.
Of course, there is a lot more to the story of my hifi journey over the course of my life, but this was where it all started.