Your first component that was "special"

Radio Shack Optimus CD-3400 portable cd player. 
http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/480/#RhZKQv396MtTLqMk.97

Rogers LS3/5a  :-)

H.H. Scott 222 tube amp with a pair of JBL L 40s! Used a Technics tuner and I bought the amp missing a tube. After a quick replacement was found, I fell for the tube sound! That was 35 years ago!

For me it was two components. Back in the summer of 1976, I bought my first audio system... Harman/Kardon receiver, BIC turntable, and a pair of Advent bullnose speakers. I upgraded the BIC turntable for a B&O turntable. WOW!! what a difference, the B&O company were at their peak and this turntable was my venture into upper level audio.

The next component I added to the system was a Nakamichi 500 Dual Tracer cassette deck. It was the most advanced two-head cassette deck ever made. The Nakamichi 500 is of special significance because of newly-developed focused-gap type record/playback heads designed by Nakamichi to give a far better head-saturation level than is found in other two-head systems.

A young kid from a small coal mining town, this was the best audio system anyone would've been proud to own. For me to have been able to add a B&O table and a Nakamichi cassette deck, I wish I had the foresight to have kept these two components. However, I am truly happy with the system I have put together for the past four years.

For me it was the ESS AMT-1 speakers with the Heil tweeter, along with a Marantz 2245 receiver and Garrard turntable.