What was your first “Stereo” like?

[Blownwoofer78]

Hi all, what was your first stereo system like?
Mine was a …..Soundesign rack stereo from K-Mart. It featured “tower” speakers that had one 6” PA speaker and a hole at the top. I think the back fiberboard panels vibrated as much as the actual speaker driver did. The speakers listed on the back “wide-range” and 5 watts! The unit had double cassette and a ceramic phono record player. I loved it!

I asked for better speakers well..the 5 watt amp would distort if I added any bass in the eq. At least my upgraded speakers..Yamaha nsa-635 had actual woofers , mid and tweeters.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Mine was a pair of KLH 17s, an AR Turntable with an ADC XLM cartridge, and a Lafayette Electronics LR 1500 TA receiver (50 WPC). Total system cost around $600 in 1972. It was a serious system for its day in a dorm room.

 

[Holmz]

A Tandy (radio shack) tube amp and a single mono speaker with a daggy old turntable as a youth.

 

[Blownwoofer78]

My first component was a Crown cd-80 CD player. I played vanilla ice on it…connected to the soundesign of course.

 

[Grumpish]

Thorens TD 160, SME 3009 (I forget what cartridge), Radford ZD22 preamp, JLH class A amp (DIY), Spendor BC1 speakers. For my 21st birthday, a long, long time ago.

 

[antennaguru]

I can't remember what brand of pre-owned compact all-in-one turntable/receiver I bought for two dollars at a garage sale, but it had a round tuner dial - and both the tuner and turntable worked. It didn't come with any speakers so I built two homemade particle board wood boxes in my Dad's wood shop, for speaker drivers that I had recovered from discarded TV sets sitting at the curb in our suburban neighborhood. I was in the sixth grade then (11 years old). My Mom thought the speakers looked ugly in my bedroom so I painted the particle board speaker boxes brown - being careful to not get any paint on the actual speaker cones. The particle board was free cut-off scrap excess from building garage shelving. I had about $2 invested in that first "stereo" and I could play the stereo records I had started accumulating and had already been playing on the mono suitcase style record player I had been given to keep me away from my Dad's nice stereo.

 

[trl]

Hello,

I had a Delia/Unitra receiver: https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/electromures/delia-aws-303.shtml and a pair of Kashtan 1 reel-to-reel speakers (Tento 10AC-401):

. Both are operating just fine today in my attic, after almost 40 years of service.

Inside the receiver I needed to swap output buffer transistors with BD911/912 and smoothing caps from the power supply. Speakers had the tweeter replaced and crossover adjusted accordingly.

I also had a Kenwood CD-player that still works today and a FX-series SONY Dolby NR deck cassette player and later a Luxman K-230 with Dolby B and C (man, I loved Dolby C for sure!).

L.E.: Forgot to add the Unitra pick-up/turntable I purchased in the early '90s.

 

[Tom C]

Panasonic all-in-one from Target. Cost maybe $100 in 1974. Sounded pretty good with headphones.

 

[warnerwh]

Mine was kind of like a suitcase where the turntable folded out and the speakers could be detached from the main casing. My dad bought me some speakers from Radio Shack for it which is what got me going in this hobby. Next step was an AR integrated amp and Dynaco a25 speakers with a BSR turntable with a Shure cartridge.

 

[dpturner]

fisher rack system from macys, 1984 or so. 100w/ch, 12" 3-way speakers. i "augmented" it with a passive cerwin-vega subwoofer and a pair of bsr tw-1 "tweeter arrays". it rocked hard. good times...

dt

 

[Doodski]

My first stereo system that was not hand-me-downs or gifts of any sort was this.

A nice Technics quartz lock direct drive turntable of a forgotten model number.

Technics Su-V303 integrated amp circa mid 80s.

ENERGY ESM-2

 

[FrankF]

Pioneer SX-650 receiver, pair of Sony SSU-2000 speakers, Pioneer cassette deck(forgot the model) and a Garrard multi-record changer turntable upgraded to a Garrard DD-75 single disk table. Blew out the tweeters several times in college but always repaired under warranty.

 

[antcollinet]

I'm glad you asked stereo system, rather than HIFI. As I started university, my parents were just emigrating to USA. Mum was feeling very bad leaving me here in UK, plus it was my birthday so took me to buy a music system. I ended up with one of these (Toshiba RT-8700S) - which was actually perfect for the job at the time. Portable, but the handle unclipped, and the speakers rotated around the outside bottom corners so that they would sit on either side of the main radio cassette unit. They could also be unclipped of that and placed further apart connected by rca leads.

So I had proper stereo with separated speakers, but in an easy to transport package. It had a huge (rated) 4W per channel output and distorted horribly anywhere near full volume. I have no idea what happened to it. I wish I'd kept it.

Shortly after getting married (about 5 years after getting this) I upgraded to a technics separates amp/cassette deck/tuner, used with my parents old turntable. I remember that each of the components cost around £100 at the time, so quite an investment in 1985.

 

[tomtoo]

https://www.radiomuseum.org/images/radio/schneider_felix/stereo_set_100_630204.jpg

 

[PierreV]

That one, or very close. Maybe there was a lower-end model. All I can remember now are the scratchy potentiometers.

 

[TankTop]

Kenwood 1990 era with the same vintage Technics Mash CD player and white glove special speakers.

 

[Zek]

Amstrad 5000 receiver

 

[Vini darko]

My first stereo was a alba mini system wich had cd , tape and radio. I later added a sony ta1010 amp and celestion hadliegh speakers found at the local dump. Loved that system.

 

[symphara]

The first stereo was a r2r tape recorder.

The first I paid money for was a Pioneer integrated system (I think it was called Lifestyle 5) which had 3 modules - radio, CD and minidisc. It had a button that copied a CD directly on a minidisc, and that was great.

 

[Berwhale]

My first setup from the mid to late 80's...

Dual CS505-2 Turntable
Akai Tape Deck (maybe a GX-A5)
Sansui Tuner (would have been a similar vintage to the amp below)
Sansui Amplifier (looked similar to an A-901, not sure exactly what model I had)
Aiwa 2 way speakers (pinched from my fathers Aiwa AF-5050 Music Centre )