Back in the late '50s, we saw the rise of kits. Loudspeaker systems, tube amplifier kits, coaxial speakers like the Pentaflux III and the University 3-way Diffaxial, cabinets like the E-V Aristocrat and similar kits from Allied Radio.
Of course, high end in those days meant you bought your speakers from Rudy Bozak. He manufactured loudspeakers here in Connecticut, using a proprietary pulp that almost nobody knew the composition of.
Us poor folks played with triode tubes and cobbled together OTL designs in our basements, often using voltage doubling rectifiers that run directly off the line with no transformers at all.
Those were fun days. Today's stuff is scary. I can't see what's going on inside an IC. But I used to be able to tell the health of a 6V6-GT or a 6550 just by looking at it in operation. And if anything broke, I could fix it with parts in my cellar. Not anymore!