What a rich seam you have started Barry and particularly suited to Morgan owners who like to tweak ad fettle!
Whilst never aspiring to the very high end of the market where, as has already been said, the sound can become more important than the music, some of the comments have led me to remember some of my forays into this world since the 1960s. I expect that, like many on here, we resorted to self-build in order to climb the quality ladder, particularly in respect of speakers. For my part I built cabinets for Jordan Watts Modules in the '70s which I only dismantled a couple of weeks ago with a view to re-building into something smaller.
These odd designs in cast steel could originally be bought in ceramic studio pottery speakers of all things. Slightly later I built a turntable using a Connoisseur kit and SME 3009 arm which I still regard as a beauty to look at and still have tucked away in its original box. This was all of £62.90 when bought in the '70s. Never being able to afford the early Quad amp and pre-amp I bought a Sinclair System 2000 Mark 2 which looked the business in my view but was pretty useless. Still have that as well. Having worked up to something better in the '80s all my kit apart from that already mentioned was stolen and I never went back to decks and visible equipment and built cupboards to conceal amp (Audiolab 8000A) cassette deck , CD player and radio. The speakers (Monito Audio) are also behind opening doors. Not the best arrangement acoustically but am happy that the equipment does not dominate the room.
Much fun has been had along the way although my biggest regret was never buying a Linn Sondek when I could have afforded it. My other regret was letting go of some of my vinyl, particularly my smallish collection of early jazz that I had been building up when I worked near Mole Jazz in Kings Cross. Incidentally, It is interested to recall some of the Linn adverts of the '70s and '80s which would probably be regarded as sexist now!
