Which system

Not  all at once guys, I can't keep up

My first system was a second hand record player, plugged into a valve radio. No perceprtion of "quality" back then, everything sounded fine on it.

When I got my first pay cheque, I bought a Pye Cambridge (the white version of the black box for those who remember!) stereo record player. All my LPs were suddenly transformed, it was like hearing them for the first time again. Lasted me for years that system did, in fact I still have it in working order in the loft.

Brings a tear to the eye just thinking about it, happy days!

mirco wrote: Fitzcarraldo wrote: My first Prog LP was played on a friend's floor-standing radiogram with a wooden case - the sort of unit that was sold in the 1950s and 1960s. My first prog audition (ITCOCK) was in a device similary to the one described by Fitzcarraldo, . But i listen to my very first purchase in a stereo system composed  by a Garrard turntable, a Scott amplifier and Siemens speakers. Storia di un minuto, BTW.

Wow,can you describe the difference?

I think I have the saddest and (musically)
impoverished story of all but I swear it is true!!

Being from a household where music wasn't valued
that highly (i think this is partly responsible for my
obsession with it) I first heard recorded music on an
old Phillips tape deck, the slim portable, top loading
ones, black and silver with a chromed handle.

We used to listen to that in the car (my mother's Neil
Diamond tapes). This was about 1972/3 I guess.
That machine broke and was never replaced so I
had no facility for recording music or playing tapes or
records. Until we got an answering machine!

I used to record music from the radio into the
machine’s microphone and listen to songs i liked
played back that way again and again.
I also borrowed a copy of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club band from a friend (the machine used
regular cassettes) and first heard that album through
that machine. And folks this was about 1978.

The following year my older brother got a mono tape
player from a friend and on that machine I first heard
things in any proper kind of form - kansas
Leftoverture, AC/DC's Powerage and Back in Black,
The Police Regatta De Blanc, Led Zeppelin's In
Through the Out Door and Song Remains the Same.
It's terrible, I wish i could remember the brand name
of that machine!

Hooked, utterly hooked. Three months later I made
my dad buy me and my younger brother a Sanyo
portable stereo cassette recorder. I was at a
boarding school at the time and 'ghetto blasters'
were just making their presence felt in electronics
and you just HAD to have one. Ours was tiny and very
quiet compared to some of the monstrosities other
kids lugged around (this was pre-Walkman
people!!!) but I didn't care.

Indeed, I can distinctle recall some kid questioning
my taste in music while I was blasting out the
closing wah-wah guitar solo from Spirit of Radio - I
just sneered, passed some teenage remark about
his inferior musical intelligence and continued
grooving.

Ah yes, those were the days when rock and roll was
a secret society membership of which had to be
quested after. There was no Kazaa to download
everything you ever wanted from. Then you had to
search, hunt, scour for the records you wanted. You'd
go to bed dreaming of the cool sleeves and imagine
finding and buying those seemingly otherworldly
records. and finding them? Like wrapping your
fingers around the holy grail.

Nowadays I have an expensive, increasingly
high-end system but while I can revel in the bass
extension and the clarity of the top end and the
breadth of the soundstage, it still just doesn't seem
as exciting as slotting a new cassette of some
obscure band just arrived by mail order or sourced
by foreign school friends into a crappy tape deck and
feeling the sizzle of exicitement as those first
incendiary guitar notes arced out of the cheap
speakers and fizzed up and down your spine .

Growing old is a terrible, terrible thing

I had saved up a bunch of money from my newspaper delivering routes to buy the famous Yamaha receiver 1020 with the matching turntable and hand-made speakers from a friend from my father that were absolutely excellent and added some months later a cassette deck from Akai . Except for the cassette deck this set still exists and works quite fine in a friend's cottage in Collingwood , Ontario. Never a repair except for burnt fuses and lightbulb in almost 30 years. They probably don't make them like they used to.

But I listened to my first-bought Crime Of The Century on some 3-in-1 Sony deck from my dad. As I was always accaparating  it (75) , my father told me get my own and paid for a quarter of that Yamaha set.

Edited by Sean Trane

My first was Trick of the Tail, August 2003 on my Dad's Rega Planar 3 with RB 300 arm through Kef 103s. These names mean nothing to me but they've been drilled into my head because every time I wanted to listen to something I get a talk about how the system works.  But no longer! For doing well in my exams last year I got the record player! And long may I keep it. That record (followed by Wind and Wuthering) was enough to drag me away from indie and nu-metal anyway...

Oh dear, Oh dear - first vinyl prog album would have been 'The Best Of Uriah Heep' back in 1974(ish); as it would have been played on my parents' "stereo" in those days, it would have been a Bush music centre (complete with moulded plastic lid...).

Not so much a record deck, as a lathe!

WATCH OUT WHERE THE HUSKIES GO, emdiar

clemdallaway wrote: My 1st prog album was ELP Brain Salad Surgery, it was played on an early 80's Fischer stereo, i've still got it in working order lol.

 

Does it look like this

oliverstoned wrote: What is this crappy homemade turntable?! I doubt that it workd best than a LP12, even a Rega Planar3!

 

Oliver are you having a problem grasping English?

If you look back you'll see i think Rega & Linn are Tosh,Of course i don't expect you to agree cos your heads in the reviewers clouds.

That happens to be a bag of Bollox Rega'Planar' derivitive,you know Rega do manufacture the Planner for companies such as Moth,Akai,Nad etc...But there essentially the same crap.

All sh*t all the same.

Edited by Karnevil9