Hi, I was just wondering what everyone had for stereos back then. I remember having a ghetto blaster for a while and my parents had a CANDLE stereo system with radio/cassette deck/ and phono. It was a pretty cheap system but it was good enough at the time. In around 1987 I finally got my first stereo system. It was a SANYO system that I bought at Woodwards for 299.00 on sale(save 100.00 dollars!!) I still have a catalog with the ad in it. It had a phono player, radio,  a dual cassette deck with continuous play and was an amazing 10 watts of power lol .  I was pretty happy at the time. That system still works and is still in the family. So far my sister, mom, brother and now my brother in law's parents have used it.

;D  My first REAL jam system was a bada** PIONEER stereo..phono player.. dual cassettes..radio ( always listened to ROCK 103 ) it was the tower with the glass door and the speakers were about 4 FT tall..it was the BEST! First albumn ever played on it was Led Leppelin 1...

In the early 80's, I had a ghetto blaster as well. I used to walk around the city with it over my shoulder, BLASTING the Times Square soundtrack. Ramones, Suzi Quattro, Patty Smith. That thing ate up batteries by the truck load!  >:(

Around 85, I got my first real stereo system. Technics turntable (still have it at home), Pioneer receiver, Technics dual cassette deck (I think it was Technics), BIG Pioneer speakers. Think my CD player was a Sony. I remember you could programme in the names of the CD's so whenever you popped a particular CD in, it would show the name of the band and the album title. That was pretty rad...think I got that in 87.

I used to love going to a store in the 90's and asking "Do you sell needles?" Insert dumbfounded expression of a totally clueless kid behind the counter.  "You know, to play those big black platters of music."   :D ;D 8)

;D  LOL..Metal..Yea..kids nowadays cannot imagine ALBUMNS!!!!

I'm more familiar with boomboxes and portable stuff then -- the most memorable one to me was a "countertop style" Panasonic dual tape boombox from about 1984 (model FW-17 - I remember 'cause I incidentally found a used one a few years back, which works great!). Despite being pretty basic, it copied almost perfectly and had a cool built-in microphone as many did at the time.

^ In fact, when my dad used to make mixtapes for us on it, he'd do these cool announcements on it, either just DJ'ing or doing "voices" to announce the songs - such as Mr T. ;D

For that reason alone, I'm kinda attached to microphones and tapes, LOL!

;D  I had a really nice boom box as well..I wouldnt exactly say it was portable tho as it weighed about 500 pounds..lol...it had the dual cassettes and the really cool part was that it was a shortwave as well..used to party then come home late and listen to Pple in other countrys and freak out!!