Hello from Washington...

[Jeff Aguilar]

I haven't had a chance to introduce myself yet.

Thanks for the invite over here Sonnie. I look forward to all the conversations here.

A little background...

I was born 3 minutes before my evil twin brother...

Oh, maybe not that far back.

I am originally from the Bay Area in California. I ended up in Washington State after doing my time in the Navy. I met my wife out here, got married and stayed ever since. I really love the beauty of the Northwest and the very mild climate. It does rain a bit here, but it’s tolerable. I have been married now going on 17 years and have two boys. I sell Real Estate for a living. I have done a few jobs over the years, for several years had two jobs at a time. I have worked for UPS, loading trucks in the mornings, had a job locating underground utilities and was even a Youth Pastor for 5 years. I have been selling homes for 12 years now and really enjoy it. It has been wonderful to be able to let my wife stay home for the kids the last 10 years.

I got interested in home theater shortly after getting married in 1989. My wife should have seen the signs during our honeymoon when I took a whole bunch of the wedding proceeds and bought a new TV. I blame the whole addiction on my wife since she took a job right after we got married in a video store. The owner and I were really good friends and he is the one who got me into Laserdiscs.

My wife didn't like the fact Laser's were so expensive. Luckily, I was in the test market for the DVD players and upon learning that my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child, I went out and bought one of those Pioneer combo Laserdisc/DVD players. I haven't looked back since.

We (ok, it has been just me, not my wife and I) have been upgrading and changing our equipment like anyone else who has this illness, upgraditis.

A few years ago, I met this really cool guy online at another forum. It turns out he only lived about 10 minutes away from me. I had just purchased the Outlaw 950 and he had the lastest Rotel, so we got together to do a comparison of the two different units. We have been friends ever since. That is Erik Farstad, one of the moderators here.

Erik had some really, really cool Martin Logan SL3 speakers. I was captivated by the sound. I sold off my Energy Veritas speakers and invested in some ML Aerius i speakers. My Outlaw/Parasound combo sounded pretty good with them, but I knew that those speakers could sound better. Well, that started off my tube fetish. I then bought a tube integrated amp. It only pushed 35 watts a channel, but WOW, what a beautiful sound came out of my ML speakers. Of course that pushed me into investing in a tube preamp, and then a tube based CD player and then larger Tube mono block amps... Do you see where this is going?

As far as other hobbies go, well there isn’t much time for too much other stuff. Our boys are 9 and 11, and it seems much of our time is dedicated to them right now. They both play soccer and baseball. Soccer season for the oldest is an 11 month season, so we seem to be always coming and going for sports around our house. I really enjoy listening to music and when I have time, I enjoy reading. I haven’t had much time for reading lately, so I have been listening to books on cd while driving to and from work.

I am looking forward to seeing this forum grow and getting to know all of you here.

Jeff Aguilar