Yes, we do have to start somewhere, and you are off to a good start.
I got an early start! When I was three I was given a gramophone that played five inch discs of nursery rhymes. Problem was, there was no spring or governor, just a flywheel and you had to keep cranking the handle. It aggravated me, so I persuaded my father to give me a wind up gramophone made in India. He brought it back after serving with the Royal Engineers in India during WW II. That was a big improvement. You could wind it up and play two sides of a 78. You placed either steel needles in the sound box, or used fiber needles you had to sharpen. I got acquainted with Bach and Beethoven very well.
When I was seven, I was given for Christmas, a pre WW II HMV radiogram.
It had medium and long wave radio. The MW worked well and I could tune in radio stations from continental Europe from our home high above the river Medway in Kent. It had an electric moving iron pickup that took the same needles as previously. The speaker was an elliptical unit, with an electro rather than permanent magnet. Sound was poor, but it had connection sockets for an external speaker, so connected a 12 inch Goodmans in an open backed box. Things were better but not good enough.
With the help of my father I built a quarter wave Voight pipe with an 8 inch WB driver. I also put together my first tube amp, a single ended 3W tube amp. I had an Acos Black Shadow crystal pickup. It had 78 and LP heads, you slid on and off. Tidying up my fathers odds and ends in September, I came across the LP head. It is probably the last one left.
With the advent of stereo in 1959, I built a 10 watt per channel tube amp, that I still have in storage. I built a wide variety of speakers at that time, most of them terrible.
By the time I was your age I still had my 10 watt tube amp, and had added a Quad 22 tube preamp, which I still have and I still use it. The turntable is the left of the three in this
picture. The tube Quad 22 preamp is the one below it. I use it because it has the Eq for just about any brand of 78 disc pressed. The arm is Decca ffss with LP and 78 heads. The turntable is a Garrard 301.
My FM tuner was a tube HMV unit. I also had a
Brenell MK5 tape deck with tube tape preamp I built. I still have it. I started restoration some years ago and need to get back to it. The problem is I don't have a use for it. My speakers were a couple of
Jordan Watts Modules with STC tweeters in folded Voight quarter wave pipes. Those speakers were very good and I used them for quite a few years.
So that was my system when I was your age. That is now 44 very short years ago. I have got into a lot more trouble since.
I hope your journey through audio, will be as satisfying and interesting as mine.
