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.
The very first piece of ‘serious’ audio gear had to be my dad’s hand-me down Sony TC-230. It was a reel tape deck with an amp built in that had pretty decent sound. Into this I ran a rather crap BSR turntable from a plastic-y console thing, but later moved to a Technics SL-232 with an AT cartridge.
Later I upgraded to a Leak integrated amp that sounded absolutely blah and bland, leaving me wondering why all the audio magazines of the day fauned all over the brand. Speakers were some Zenith cheapies that didn’t sound awful and then some rather aged (even for the late 70s) National Panasonic speakers.
Sony always said Tapecorder on the nameplate if i remember right. Beautiful metal take-up reels as well.