Richard Hardesty was one of the major high-end dealers in Southern California in the 1970’s and 80’s (Havens & Hardesty). I attended the shop’s in-store appearance of Harvey Rosenberg (one of hi-fi’s all-time most colorful and interesting characters ;-) when he introduced his New York Audio Labs Super It phono pre-amp, which I subsequently purchased from the shop. I unfortunately found the Super It to be inferior to the phono section of the Frank Van Alstine-modified Dynaco PAS-2 I already owned (I fed the RIAA phono signal from the PAS’ tape out jacks to a volume pot box I made myself---bypassing the line stage---to my power amp, a technique I learned of in the promotional literature for the Audio Research SP-2C and Dual 50 power amp), and returned the Super It for a refund (Richard was not happy ;-) .
Richard’s The Audio Perfectionists Journal was very enjoyable; I found it to be refreshingly free of the excessive (imo) "subjectiveness" of The Absolute Sound. It was somewhat closer to Peter Moncrieff’s International Audio Review, though far more succinct and less verbose. Richard unfortunately lived to only 70 years of age, leaving us in 2014.