Music systems I have lived with
For those who do not know me personally, I was born in 1964 and grew up in a very middle-class family in India. My father is an electrical engineer by qualification and was an officer in a government-owned power generation and distribution company; my mom is a housewife; I have a brother six years younger than I. I still live in India. I am from Bengal --- this means that there is a high likelihood that my parents will like both music and books. In my case, both were correct, though I suspect my mother loves music more than my dad.
I am going to go on a flashback journey here, recounting all the music systems I have seen, used or otherwise lived with as part of my life. When I look back at the story in totality, I can see that my family, and later, I, upgraded our music system roughly once every decade.
HMV Star
My earliest memories of a music system was a record player called the "Star", made by the Indian arm of HMV. HMV was, and is, a household word in India, but I didn't know at that time that this was originally a British company.
This record player's chassis was made out of some sort of thick synthetic substance: it did not appear to be metal, though it might have been. The body was square, perhaps 12" per side, and there was a lid on a hinge. With the lid closed, I will guess that the height of the resulting box-like shape would be eight to nine inches. You had to open the lid and keep it open while playing records. The turntable was bigger than the 7" discs, and 12" discs would project outside the chassis when placed on the platter. The tonearm was heavy by modern standards, and had no counterweight. If I were to guess, I would say that the tracking force of that tonearm was not less than 25 grams.
The chassis below the platter must have had an amplifier, because sound came out of the box when a record was played. Thinking about it now, I guess this was a valve amplifier. I do not remember anything of the sound quality, because it was with us only till I was about ten.
I do not have any memories of how my parents used to sit or walk about while playing records on this record player. I only know they used to play it often, and had quite a few 78 RPM and other records. I have a dim sense that playing music on this device was one of the things my parents found interesting.