This is no boast but I love my Stereo, it is the centre of my life and my only essential possession for someone who is not really into possessions. A good stereo has always been my no.1 priority and after a few false starts when I actually got a proper job I was able to start saving for the one I have now, I intend to keep it for as long as it will last, which taking into Pioneer's reputation for "finish like a Rolls Royce; with build quality like a Volvo" I really hope this will be for the rest of my life.

I started my stereo life with a radio my Grandad gave me. Then I got my Dad's old setup (record deck and Sinclair compact amp) which I added another one of my Grandads radio's to. After this when I started work I bought a Pioneer compact Hi-fi which I really started to hate, I decided to buy the following to replace it:

Core components		date puchased d/m/y
Amp	Pioneer A-777	4/12/91	£399.99
CD	Pioneer PD-8500	13/11/92	£199.80
Tape	Pioneer CT-676	30/12/91	£199.80
Speakers	JVC SP-X990 floor standers	8/01/91	£199.80
		Total:	£999.39
Misc components
Headphones	Sennheiser HD 530 II	12/10/94	£79.95
Tape 2	Pioneer CT-540	8/3/93	£35.95
Radio	Technics ST-X933L

Cobra 3 interconnect from CD to AMP
Carnival Silver Plus speaker cables
Homemade rack
Misc components are an extra tape deck and a radio, which were second hand cheap and "just do".

I started buying to components in 1991 one unit at a time. I used to fawn over the catalogues but these 3 were the components I really wanted. They didn't come easy, and it wasn't just a matter of going out with £999.39+ and getting just what I wanted. First of all I got the amp and paid top whack for it on a "buy now pay later" scheme, it was the worst thing and hung over me all along until the payment was due and I vowed never to do it again. With the other units I was lucky: I got the tape and speakers in sales, they should have been £80 more each. The CD I left far too long and by the time I was ready to buy you could only get the ugly 1 bit machines. I just happened to visit Peter Watts Pioneer Dealer in Bury St. Edmunds (Suffolk UK) one day and there was the CD I had wanted all that time... and... £200 cheaper than new! Therefore my stereo core components should have cost £1359.39 so I saved £360 on marked price. I often went into Peter Watts from '89 onwards and I guess they got to know me, so when I was ready to buy they knocked a bit off the price. Peter Watts is now closed down (perhaps they were too generous!).

Pioneer A-777 Amplifier
My Review: It is based on the minimal A-400 which was a prize winning amp in its time with a very transparent sound. The A-777 is a fully loaded version with much greater power and every knob and twiddle you can think of. Reviews were not too favourable in the hi-fi magazines saying that the sound was hash. The amp weighs 19 kg with its massive heat sinks and transformers: as there are two of everything and each channel has its own components. Personally I love the way it sounds and dislike the 'warm-fuzzy' sound of other amps, however the so called harshness of the sound can grate at higher volumes for a longer listening period. This can be a quiet detailed listen or turn it up to let the monster breath.
95+95watts at 8ohms, 140+140watts at 4ohms

Pioneer PD-8500 CD Deck
My Review: I know little about what the media said about this unit, all I know is that it was only a current model for one year and the following year all Pioneer cd players were 1 bit units. Mine is a 28 bit unit. I find the sound very clear but just on the side of too clear. Cosmetically it is a babe and has minimal front panel buttons, most of the functions are relegated to the remote.

Pioneer CT-676 Tape Deck
My Review: This one I know is a winner and it was given rave reviews at the time for its sound quality. I love the powered cassette door, just needing to press play to have the door whip in and play to start! I also love the Super Auto BLE where you can match the cassette exactly for recording. The machine analyses the tape and sets its Bias, Level and Eq accordingly. You do get great recordings from it. All topped off with a real time tape counter and display off button.

JVC SP-X990 Speakers
My Review: Yet Again I have little idea what the media said. They are not so expensive as far as speakers are concerned. They are a 3 way setup with 25cm bass cones. They stand 858mm tall. The sound is a little too glaring sometimes, but it is hard to know if this is the fault of the amp (etc). They can play quiet but they have real abilities to pump out the bass. In the picture I have taken the grills off, but usually they run with black grills over the speakers.
100watts, 200 watts music
Speaker update: My son (3 years old at the time) put his fingers through the tweeter and midrange on one side of the speakers. I contacted speakercity USA and ordered 2 Peerless tweeters and 2 Vifa 5 1/2 inch midrange. I then replaced the lot on my speakers. The sound is exactly what I wanted, less glairing but more detailed, speakercity USA delivered on the speakers but unfortunately their communication and ordering process leaves something to be desired.

Sennheiser HD 530 II Headphones
My Review: The Hifi mags said these were best suited to Jazz and to start off with I found the sound odd. But over the years they have "broken in" and I like the sound very much. They are able to handle all music very well from techno to classical. The bass weight is perfect and the detail stunning. Build quality is second to none the only problem was needing new foam for the ear pads, but this was after 10 years use! Before these I had a string of top of the range Pioneer headphones, all of which fell apart in 2 years.

Chord Company Cables
My Review: I have replaced my ageing IXOS cable to the CD and QMM speaker cables with Carnival Silver Plus speaker cables and a Cobra 3 interconnect from CD to AMP from the Chord Company. There is a great improvement in sound quality, much more detail and the 'flabby' bass sound, which I blamed on the speakers, has gone.

ALL OVER! 19/3/06 all components taken down dump and chucked away :( :( It is all very well to have these ideals but sometimes life doesn't work out that way :( :(

The size of it started to get me down, a great slab of stereo and the box it had to stand on had to be a big lump to take the 19kg amp alone! Then the speakers were big floor standers which ended up as a huge lump of black of a stereo. Ok it still sounded good, but I wondered if new ones sounded better, also technology was catching up with it and not being able to play mp3 on the cd was frustrating. Now I have small subwoofer/satalite speakers for computers and a mp3 cd walkman. What was the point in being able to have bone crunching loud music when you can never turn it up as it will annoy the neighbours? There were many other issues involved not just the ones above but that is in the past now.

Creative Zen Vision M 30gig my new stereo! The sound quality is superb and with higher quality mp3 you would not know the difference. My whole cd collection fits on it and more. Now I can take my stereo where I want: in the car, at home at the office. I still have my Sennheiser headphones which I use with the Zen. Only problem is the harddisk is too small, I don't want an ipod and they have stopped making the Zen 60gb.

Also I now have over 30gigs of music on my computer so it has turned into a stereo with a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme soundcard and Logitech 5.1 Surround Speakers the sound quality is superb.

Links:
www.speakercity.com
www.pioneer-eur.com
www.jvc.com
www.sennheiser.com
www.creative.com
www.chord.co.uk