My first stereo was handed down to me by my mother. It was one of those combination Phono + 8 Track Tape Player + Stereo Receiver boxes. I don't remember the brand (Fisher???), I just remember her buying it on credit from the Montgomery Wards catalog some 6 years prior. The thing was old: the 8 track player no longer worked, you had to set a penny atop the needle whenever you played albums, and the speaker wires had miles of electrical tape on them, but it was mine and I was in heaven. We had just moved from our home into a small apartment in a new city. There weren't many kids in the neighborhood, so I spent most of my time listening to music.

Some years later, as a teen, I would work during the summer and after school to buy piece by piece a full multi-component stereo system.

The JVC receiver came first along with small Kenwood speakers.

A month later, a Technics turntable.

A few weeks after that, an Onkyo dual cassette tape deck. I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I was to have Dolby features and the ability to record from tape to tape, or to play mix tapes continuously. And about those tapes - was I the only one that wouldn't settle for anything less than either the Maxell "Metal" or the "high bias pure epitaxial" cassettes?

A couple more months would pass before I could afford the Onkyo equalizer. I had hoped for either a Yamaha or Sony eq with the "graphic spectrum analyzer," but both were well out of my price range. I made do with the Onkyo with the boring green lights on the sliders.

At about the time that I purchased the EQ, a new music media format was just hitting the stores: the audio mini discs and the redbook CD. It took me 3 more months and all of my department store credit and employee discount, but I eventually added an Onkyo 6 disc CD player.

I would finally punctuate my stereo system by adding a second pair of speakers, a pair of Yamaha tower speakers with 12" woofers. Of all of my friends, I was the only person on the block with speakers in all 4 corners of the room. Mismatched or not, they all thought the stereo was the best that they'd ever heard. Boy, were we dumb. Ha!

Safe to say, I've come a LOOOOOOONG way from those early days... but there's still plenty of room yet to grow.