I guess it depends on your definition of Old Fart. I'm 61 and I run 2 miles every morning. Play tennis and golf, waterskiing in good weather, and shoot hoops with my 30 year old son. I do all the yard work and maintenance on my main home and lake property. Being old is better than the alternative,..... being dead! On car audio...I do remember my Dad bringing home the first eight track I'd ever seen. It was a silver box that the eight track tape sat on top of in small brackets and it had dual levers you had to slide back and forth to change tracks. It was made by Lear corporation and was initially designed to be the first flight recorder for aircraft. By the way, In my mind I still feel like I'm 18, but my body sometimes reminds me that I'm not.

By the time I was 12, I had mastered the art of mowing yards in an efficient manner and covered the entire neighborhood(22 yards at $5 each)weekly all summer and made some "big bucks"!

The local stereo store had a sale so I rode my bike down there and bought a couple things.

Pioneer SX-737 receiver,Pioneer turntable....I think it was a PL-115d?.
Then I ordered some drivers from Speakerlab,built the cabinets out of plywood to spec,and the game was on!!

A pioneer CTF-850 cassette came a couple years later so I could record my albums and play them in my new found love......MY TRUCK!!( I had a "farm permit" and could legally drive at 14!)

That's when things got interesting. It was 1976 and I wanted the same imaging and sound in my "72 Chevy pickup" that I had at home!

By '77 I had pulled it off with a combination of car audio speakers,proper placement of the drivers through experimentation/fabrication,a couple tweeters and woofers from Speakerlab,a boatload of caps,coils,and plywood to experiment and make everything sound right,and a ton of driveway time!

I also moved the gas tank from the cab to under the bed to make room for the woofers behind the seat.

Looking back,it's easy for me to see why I'm where I am now......I wish i had been interested in finance,imports,or something that made a ton of money ;-)

By the way, In my mind I still feel like I'm 18, but my body sometimes reminds me that I'm not.

What he said.
I have a simple goal.
Die somewhere north of 80, sometime south of 18.

My first stereo was my favorite. I read Stereo Review and haunted the stereo shops in my town. I really wanted a Kenwood integrated amp, a Technics turntable, and a pair of Infinity bookshelf speakers.
I worked all spring and summer saving every cent. Finally, I had what I thought I would need to get the system. I went to the shop one of my friends said could help me and I told them what I wanted. The sales dude asked me what I liked to listen to, how loud, and was I willing to listen to stuff I might like better.
That day I ended up walking out with a layaway receipt, and two months later I finally took home my first system.
Quad 33 preamp, FM3 tuner, 303 amp.
Connoisseur belt drive turntable with a Goldring cartridge.
KEF Corelli speakers with generic stands.
That system taught me how to listen to the music.

NICE!
I used to sell the Connoisseur turntables. They came from England. Great tables. We set them up in our shop, but the problem was about 1 out of 4 came without all of the parts needed! We had open boxes all over the back room. It was s nightmare. Good tables though!

Mid 70s a Marantz 2270 with my Dad's KLHs than I added a Technics SL1600. I don't remember what I replaced the KLHs with.

My first car system was a Blaupunkt Cassette head unit when everyone else had 8 tracks. My next door neighbor was the Blaupunkt/NGK rep in the south east. I had to cut up the metal dash on my 69 Cutlass Supreme convertible to get the head unit to work. Mount some 6x9 in the truck firing forward and an amp.

My first album Santana Abraxas. I'm surprised I didn't wear the grooves through the album.

The next door neighbor had some amazing cars. One of the first 240z in Atlanta. Lowered, with triple Solexs, for all intent and purpose it was track ready. He sold that and had a 280SL Benz, Lotus Europa, a Ferrari 365GTB convertible (that was hot), and finally a Pantera. I forgot somewhere in that mix he had a Volkswagon Rabbit and a Chevy Vega. He Huck Finned me into helping him replace the "stock" intake manifold, carburetor and imagination with and Edelbrock manifold, Holley carb and Excel electronic ignition. He had 60s on the front and 50s on the back.

How he fit into any of these was beyond me. He was about 5'6" by 5'6". His wife was a platinum blond with a grocery bag face but amazing body that liked to sun tan in the nude. You went into their house and over the fireplace was a nude portrait of her.

Ha ha ha --- I had a guy I worked for that had a hot wife, and I'd go over and evaluate his latest speaker designs... He was a former engineer from MacIntosh and I met him when we worked at Phase Linear.

Anyways, I was admiring the painting in the living room after a few too many drinks... and his wife said: "Yes thank you Bruce I appreciate the compliment"... it was her! I nearly choked on my drink

God she was easy on the eyes.

Here's a lie, that truth be told is most often repeated by liberals (or look at it this way -- what conservative would be such an idiot as to promulgate this concept?). "Do what you love and the money will follow." Years of doing just that shows me it takes a lot more than that.

Pilgrim,

I may have been the guy on the phone at Speakerlab that sold you your drivers back then!

Somehow I knew Mr. Stanley would have a comment on my system. That was my core stereo for many years. All I did was change cartridges a few times, tried a couple of cassette decks, and worked my way through about 5 different CD players(NEC, Philips, Kyocera, Yamaha, Sony). Still loved the records better. When the motor wore out on the Connoisseur, I replaced it with a modded Thorens TD 166.
I really miss my KEF Corellis.

Re Thorens, they also make/made music boxes.

There's one good electronics store left in Hollywood, and they have twenty feet of glass cases with vintage stuff in them. Here are two views of a Thorens player that I saw there the other day. These aren't the same one as the room lighting made a photo impossible in that store.







Imagine putting a ten inch record (the standard size back then) onto a 2 1/2" turntable! Heck, maybe it's not even 2" in diameter.

I had for a while, a Thorens TD 145 with an SME arm. Nice turntables (about the best at the time back then) - However it si CRAZY to see all of the $150,000.00 turntables out there at the shows these days.

Was in a house recently, the guy had (3) turntables in his listening room that were in that price range. He had over $1 mill tied up in the room in just acoustical treatment and design / bulid-out. Nice to have money. I didn't even recognise his speakers or electronics. Very esoteric stuff. He also had a 2 inch Ampeg tape machine. Still uses it. Amazing sound.

I think your news station is feeding you incorrect information. I have yet to meet a liberal who says "do what you love and the money will follow". That sounds more like lifetime channel BS to me. Some people love to sleep. Sleeping doesn't pay very well.

We have enough "business men" in the world. We don't need anymore economy or ecological rapists. Mowing lawns to buy stereo equipment is an example of what capitalism should be. Using inherited money, tax loop holes and importing outsourced products at lobbied low pricing is whats killing the country.

Mine was a Tape recorder that I tried adding two tower speakers to. Didn't quite make the polarity match and blew her up.