The Rega Planar 2

It's easy to imagine I had no record collection and only listened to pirated cassettes but in fact I had a healthy record collection long in to the CD age.
I reasoned that if I was going to buy records I might as well try and use the best possible equipment. The Linn Sondek was out of my reach but the Rega Planar 2, with its glass platter was reasonable and coupled with an Ortofon VMS30E Mk II stlylus (no bamboo here....) was very, very good.

The amplifier was a source switch and the closest I could afford to a "piece of wire with Gain" but the KEF Celeste II speakers helped, and for 20 years no improvements were needed.

Of course CDs arrived and I'm sorry, but they're just better. No crackle, no rumble, no hiss, a much lower noise floor and on an A/B blind test using my favourite source material "Crime of the Century" by Supertramp the CD version was noticeably better, both on speakers and on Sennheiser headphones.

The current retro-vogue for vinyl, even cassettes is just daft: I can get the whole Tidal lossless FLAC-encoded bitstream thing but vinyl, really? It doesn't sound better, what you're hearing is the mechanical bits getting in the way of the orginal master tape. And buying new vinyl is even sillier: they're copies of the CD masters, so you're really not winning anything at all.

The Rega lingered long in to the CD age but once I'd bought (reluctantly) all my records again on CD and finally ditched the tapes and ripped the CDs the loft needed emptying and I sold it to a man in Sweden who paid more than I bought it for (mind you I had the original box and instructions). Now that represents value for money.