Well, now. I started fiddling with my father's kit Realistic reel-to-reel with a "magic eye" instead of a VU meter when I was about seven. I learned to thread the thing up, route a signal, and record on my own... and then he walked in on me.
Being a fantastic dad, he decided to buy me my own recorder for my birthday to his protect his gear so he bought me a Webcor 620 reel-to-reel, around 1968 when I was eleven. I loved that thing. I learned to make tape loops and playback tapes backwards and that kind of fun stuff on this one.
Probably the first one I made serious recordings on was a Tandberg 9100X with cross-field heads. I later picked one of those up and now it lives in the studio with me.
During college I bought a Tascam 3440 and Model 3 mixer and started my own studio.
Meanwhile I was studying recording, music composition, and electronic music in college.
(I'm on the left)
Which leads me to being hired into the industry in 1981, and working on Neve and Solid State Logic consoles and Ampex, Sony, and MCI tape decks. Pic is from 2003.
These days I record non-linear on DAWs with Nuendo.
So, that's kind of hard-core, I guess.
Bob