How did you get into this hobby?

My Father got me to transfer all his R2R to Cassette tape, when I was just about 7 years old. He worked out of town at the time Mon-Fri so when he left Monday morning I had a new batch ready for him. I lived "in" his system till I was about 16, & then at 18 I got serious. He passed away 2 years ago, prior to my Tube journey. I know if he where alive today he'd be hard to send home to Mom, & get my listening room back to myself.

Forced into it by my wife so she's have something significant to bitch about at the girl's club lunches.

walked into the back room of Mace Electronics in Erie PA when I was 14 or so in 1975 and heard a pair of JBL L-200s and Marantz units playing Supertramp and the Eagles.
My first amp was a JVC integrated 30 watter when I was 17, with a garrard turntable, shure cart. and Pioneer Project 60 speakers, bought from that location.

I think I've been a sort of audiophile all my life. I've always listened to music (started at age 3 with Beatles records, used to drive the household nuts!), and even at the age of 7 or 8 was always wanting "more" than the BSR turntable. Started into separates with a Radio Shack SA 10 amp - an output of about 3 watts per channel as I recall - at the age of 13, and then progressed through a series of Pioneer, Sony, and whatnot, until I settled down with an NAD system for about 7 years. Bought a Naim system after that, which lasted almost ten years, then got totally stupid.

This audiophile thing to me is sort of like a non-serious but lingering medical condition; every once in a while it gets bad enough to need treatment in various degrees, then goes into remission for an unspecified time. It was only life threatening once, when my wife gave me the choice of going to Florida or buying speakers. I went for the speakers...

Grado headphones. Went to replace my earbud headphones and tried out a few full sized and started hearing what I was missing. The guy told me to go next door to the hi-fi shop if I wanted to hear good headphones. Bought a pair SR-60's and within a year I had the RS-1's and matching RA-1. Then it was a better cdp then amp and speakers etc.etc.etc......