What started you off?

[Fran]

This was my first real hifi amp. I already had a couple of mini systems, and had a Denon amp and a cd player I bought in live wires (Royal Hibernian way) while in college, but this was the first real hifi thing I bought.

I had been watching out for a valve amp, and saw this in buy-and-sell (remember that? When you bought a classifieds paper!). A friend in work copped the same lad also he ad a pair quad 57s for sale. He very wisely advised me that if I was going buying the amp, to make sure I had enough money with me to buy the quads because "they are famous and meant to be brilliant".

Suffice to say I can home with this amp and a pair of quads which I still have. I've done very little with this amp over the years. I bypassed the balance pot, replaced the volume pot with a stepped one and had to replace some cathode resistors. The reason it's on the bench here was to chase down a fault which turned out to be a bad valve. Haven't actually seen a valve go bad in a very long time.

What got you going in hifi?


Fran

[Steve]

So the first foray midway through secondary school was an Aiwa midi-system. Complete with spectrum analyser. Loved it and immediately spent many a weekend in Abbey Discs or Attack Records in Crown Alley building up the 12" collection of club hits. A schoolyard discussion with a regular on this forum had me trotting down to hear Simon's Arcam & Mission separates setup. Which sonically blew me away. Eric Clapton Unplugged was a revelation. So managed to trade in the midi with Capel HiFi for a set of Mission 780's and an Aiwa cd player. Studio One had a sale on with a decent enough discount on a Pioneer A300X, so that assumed the power duties. A used Technics table from Lafayette spun the 12" club hits.
A trip out to Cloney to get some AudioQuest speaker cable was a fantastic experience which then hooked me into the upgrade route.... Expensive trip that... Just thinking now, there used to be quite a few different options for checking out entry level separates back then. As well as the above, there was also HiFi Corner, Harry Moore's, Peats, Sony Centre, then Richer Sounds came along. I guess HiFi was a lot more popular back then!

[Diapason]

Yes, Steve and I certainly grew up together in this ridiculous hobby, goading each other on to buy stuff we couldn't afford. I'm glad to report that the goading continues to this very day, and WhatsApps along those lines were exchanged mere days ago...!

In terms of what got me started, I think we can blame a Crown midi system my parents got me for Christmas when I was 14 or 15. I had wanted one of those newfangled CD players (newfangled in Ireland anyway) and here it was in all its vertical, manual-loading glory. It sounded like dogs**t, and I wasn't happy, so I vowed I'd save up some of the money I was earning from playing the organ and buy myself something good. My neighbour had separates (with Bose speakers) and I decided I'd have some of that action, but since I didn't know what to look for, somewhere along the line I bought my first What Hifi magazine. I'd never even heard of the makes they were talking about (Rotel? Marantz?) so I got the sense they belonged to a rarified other world and must therefore automatically be good. Then I popped into Harry Moore's on Dawson St and was disappointed to see the usual array of Sony and Panasonic. Where were all those other makes I'd read about in the magazine? One of the sales assistants took me to one side and whispered "you need to get yourself out to Cloney Audio in Blackrock".

A few weeks later I persuaded my Dad to drive me out there one Thursday evening, still in my school uniform, a fact that Joe Lanigan reminded me about regularly. To say I was blown away was an understatement, this wasn't like a normal "shop" as I thought of it. Joe put together the system I asked about (Marantz player, Arcam amp, Mission speakers), told me to enjoy myself, and then LEFT THE ROOM!! What the hell? By the time he came back I was ready to buy there and then buy he basically wouldn't let me, telling me I should come back some other day and try some more speakers to make sure I got what I really liked. I couldn't believe it.

Once Joe delivered the system and spent a Friday night lifting carpets and floorboards with my Dad so we could run Audioquest speaker cables, I knew I was hopelessly hooked. By the time I was in college I had my dealer on speed-dial, but in my case it was Cloney Audio...

[Ivor]

I had been using my Dad's Dansette Viva mono yoke and it was fine... happy enough with it but then I heard a mate's Amstrad fake separates and realised that different systems gave different results. The Amstrad was awful but it made me want to know more about what I could get.

Late 1979 ish I had a few weeks wages (well student grant thingy) paid in one Xmas cheque and I knew I'd either drink it all in two nights or go looking for some sort of hifi. Shanahan's in Rathmines, beside the old Fire Station had a Reynolds stereo record player including two speakers within budget. My first foray into stereo! It was actually ok and lasted a few years.

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I had gotten to know the lads in Laskeys HiFi in Rathmines and when one of them setup Audiotek on teh other side of teh old Fire Station I stared longingly at their display everyday as I walked past! I eventually bought a Sansui FRD25 record player, A Cambridge P50 amp and Videoton speakers. They did me for years and upgrading the cartridge, speaker cable etc led me down the rabbit hole...

the P50 amp was clearly "better" than a NAD or Creek at the time and the speakers, while essentially unknown, were competent and survived many parties.

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