I had lusted after one ever since I could remember. I used to patiently wait for some neighbors to come home so that I could listen to my cassette in its full glory on their HiFi or on a good day have them play a record. Dad only had a mono boom box at that time. We were lower middle class.
Last year of college, my brother and I hit upon the idea of applying for a TV loan and then cashing the check to buy separates. The loan took its sweet ass time, it was a small credit union, and by that time the rack we were looking at was sold. I was shattered. I still miss the Teac equalizer with the green spectrum analyzer.
Then I found a beautiful Kenwood KA405 Amp, a Sansui D90 cassette deck and Pioneer CS405 speakers.
I was king !
Later I added a beautiful dark grey Akai analog tuner and a Sansui SR333 turntable. :)
And in 1991 added a small Crown CD player that would read old and scratched disks very well but brand new ones would play with a lot of terrible crackling. No one including the technician could figure out why.
My first individual component stereo system, I cobbled together during high school between 1983 - 1985. Had my first job at the local Dairy Queen which gave me “spending money” to blow on stereo equipment.
I saved up for months to get my first receiver I bought at Circuit City. It was a Technics SA-222. I think it had a maximum of 30 watts per channel. Couldn’t afford speakers, so I listened to it with headphones for several months.
Next came the cassette deck, a Technics RS-M218. Nothing fancy, but it had the “peak hold” vu meters which I used to look at for hours.
Turntable was a Technics SL-Q300 automatic direct drive with those weird P-mount cartridges.
Speakers were the most expensive things I bought. I got a pair of Acoustic Research AR15’s. Those things could “shake the whole house” according to my mom.
Somewhere along the line I added a Realistic 31-2000A 10 band stereo frequency graphic equalizer.
In wood shop class in high school I built a pair of 12" 3 way speaker cabinets and loaded them with a kit I bought at Radio Shack.
This system lasted up until the early 2000’s when I got rid of it because “life changes” (kids, marriage, etc.)
Peak hold meters on Technics. I would never get tired of watching them. Esp the blue ones. The three color ones were also very pretty.
I still have an SL-Q300 :)