Going back more than 40 years, If you walked out the front door of my place of employment was "Jack's Records and Tapes". If you walked out the back door, probably 150 yards was the "Turntable". A stereo store owned by a guy that I had dealt with when he ran a Radio Shack. I was young, ignorant, and probably too easy to get money from. They sold me my first system and I was hooked. It was a non-stop road of upgrades and additions from there. There was the normal store front with all kinds of great equipment. Then there was a back room designed with no parallel walls where the "High End" stuff was. Buying from that room made you feel like royalty. Anyway, the original setup I gave to my dad as I started over. Timing was such that the American economy was taking a big nose dive yet Oklahoma had an oil boom that kept us going and increased buying power as shops that had expensive items were offloading it if they could to our area. I ended up with a Luxman C-12 and M-12 pre and power amps, I bought a matching Luxman cassette player and later a CD player. I saw an article on a Phase Linear PL-8000 series II turntable and had to have it. They sold me an Ortofon MC20 MkII cartridge and I had bought a set of JBL L-150 speakers so I had to have the L-150s speakers when they came out. An Akai GX 635d open reel with Nakamichi NR-200 noise reduction for it. Like was great! Then came marriage and kids. I put it all away for more than 30 years. So now kids are grown and gone, retirement is here, and I have time to bring it all back to life. Speakers obviously don't survive a hibernation period like that and so I found in Tulsa, a business that repaired and tested the drivers as needed. He guided me to service people for the power and pre amps and also the turntable. The open reel is in service now and the cassette will probably wait. There was so much more along the way in bringing it all back to life. My hearing isn't what it used to be so it probably isn't as high a bar to impress me as was in my youth but it all sounds as good as I remember. Then I stumbled across the GR Research videos and was fascinated by the "speaker optimization" process. I have started the communication leading up to that and now need to load and drive my speakers to them for evaluation and updating. I will get that in the works. Sorry for the rambling story about my dinosaur collection but it told me I needed an introduction so...
