In my earlier years, my favorite speaker was a pair of Boston Acoustics A-40 bookshelf speakers. I was more into crisper sound but they did amazing, being it was our first apartment it was a good size without to much boom/A lot depends on the home acoustics.
I really liked Denon. I started with a low end receiver and then added a cassette player and the turntable. Interestingly, all three items came from different countries. Oddly enough the best sounding speakers I had were Zenith Allegros. They came off of a Zenith wedge system I had growing up. Later on I purchased a pair of Advents but to my ears the Zeniths sounded better.
The biggest problem back in the late 70’s and into the 80’s was that vinyl recording was just horrible. The industry was cheapening the process.
AS time progressed and my AMPS became more powerful I finally blew the A40s when we moved into our new home using a NAD 2155 Amp... Ended up with a pair of Mission which at the time, maybe Stereo Review commented on their power handling among other things.
Over time I ended up with a Onkyo Power amp, same high current abilities mostly... was never too crazy about the sound of the Mission and upgraded to a lower priced pair ($500 or so) of Paradigm's which I loved and had for over 20 years and still had until last fall when we moved to our new home, I gave them to my son to sell or give away, they still worked perfect.
*LOL* and now, I have that JVC Bar 500 (which is amazing to us) and maybe a bit of relief after leaving behind a Yami receiver, 2 Paradigms, Studio series JBL center and two rear JBL sats. The Bar 500 will not match the music of the system but the video experience considering what it is (a sound bar with no rear channel speakers) is amazing, sometimes freaky hearing sounds come from the sides (but not back) we have the perfect room for the set up for that to take place on the sides that the bar fires at/ 11 foot ceilings and perfect proportion of the side walls. Its kind of startling ... nearby family member has mostly the same set up but the room is not the same nor the effect, still good but not startling .