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It was in the fall of 1969 that I bought my first really qualified "high-end" component: an AR turntable. (It cost me $58 new without a cartridge, and I spent the whole previous summer saving for it.) I was 15 years old at the time and aquired my father's circa 1956 Sherwood (mono) FM tuner and amp. Around Christmastime I purchased an AR-5 speaker (in unfinished pine!), and by the next spring I bought a second AR-5 and a matching Sherwood amp and FM multiplex adaptor from a fellow down the street who was upgrading his system. This was my first "high-end" stereo system. If it would count, I could trace my first interest in such things to 1958, when I was 4 years old: my father had one of the first Ampex home tape recorders, a model A-110 I believe, and I used to love when he would turn it on and record or play a tape.