The Spin Doctor checks out the Kuzma Safir 9, a superarm from Slovenia.

The British audio scene from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s was pretty strange. Audio as a hobby was a big deal, with widespread appeal to a much younger crowd than today. Audiophiles were guided by a flurry of what my friends called "hi-fi pornos," audio magazines that filled the racks at the newsagents.

- MICHAEL TREI

Far more than you see today, there was a strong nationalist bent, with some writers displaying an open bias against anything that wasn't British. Magazines' editorial departments presented readers with a clear, specific doctrine of how a system should be built and what components readers should acquire.

As a schoolboy with no system of my own, I lapped up these suggestions, and when I returned to the US in 1980 to attend university, I was finally able to start building a system that conformed to the system-building rules that had been drilled into me.

After I graduated four years later, I moved back to England for a year before returning to New York for good in 1985. Frustrated in my effort to find the right job in my field-as a studio recording engineer-I took what I figured would be a temporary job at the late Andy Singer's high-end audio store, Sound By Singer, which at the time was probably the most Anglophile of the New York City high-end audio stores. Nevertheless, it gave me an opportunity to listen to all manner of exotica, and I was quickly dispelled of my belief that only the British knew how to make proper hi-fi kit. Brands like Snell Acoustics, Vandersteen, Krell, and Audio Research crept into my psyche, and within a year I owned an Audio Research SP-11 Mk2 preamp and various other bits of domestic audiophilia. I did, however, continue to sneak back to Hotalings News Service for the latest imported hi-fi mags, to keep my Brit-fi interest alive. Hotalings was a legendary international news stand located in the heart of the sleazy old Times Square long before the internet displaced most magazines and Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned out all the smut. Those copies of Hi-Fi News, Hi-Fi Answers, Hi-Fi for Pleasure, and Hi-Fi World helped me pass the time during my hourlong subway commute to and from Singer each day.