My HiFi journey started in 1972, back then people were throwing console stereos away at the curb, working condition, same with TV's. All of them tube powered. Over a few years I brought stuff home that drove my parents crazy but you'd be shocked at how nice much of it was. Some of the Zenith's had actual bass coming from them, closed enclosures instead of the open ones that were common, big drivers, mid-ranges and tweeters, great sounding beasts.
I then wandered to the local malls where 2 Stereo shops competed against each other and I did a lot of dumpster diving and ended up bringing home some pretty good stuff from them as well. In 1978 I did a science project that made it down state based on speakers. To this day I still don't know how that happened but the judges loved it.
In 1979 I got a job at one of the shops and bought my first van from the guy and filled it with Marantz car audio gear (back then this stuff was very high grade) and that van pounded pretty damn good. We also got in the first Ohm F's that came out and ran them so hard the drivers were smoking, they never really got loud, just amazing speakers and it took a ton of power to drive them.
In the 80's I competed in their car audio show downs and won 1st place 3 years in a row, the owner of MTX sat in my car and said he loved it, which he should have since everything but the tweeters were MTX, the tweeters were Boston Acoustics. I was also one of the only ones sporting a CD head unit, which was good and bad since gen 1's skipped if you farted in the car so it was a big job keeping vibrations from it.
It's also the place I bought "The Sixes" from last week bringing me full circle, I love this stuff.
