SF Guarneri Homage vs Harbeth 7ES3

I have the M's, and was not overly impressed with them in my larger room (16 x 25 x 10)...event with a subwoofer thrown in. In my smaller dedicated listening room (16 x 10 x 8), they sound amazing...quite a transformation.

Just another data point for you to evaluate.

Thank you all for your input. I have been close to buying a pair of Guarneri's but eventually ended up buying a pair of Harbeth's Super HL-5. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to test the Guarneri's and relied on some trusted friends' mixed feelings about them -- stunningly beautiful speaker, but probably overrated in terms of its musicality and acoustic performance. Let's put it this way. I have two close friends who are professional reviewers for Italian sound magazines. Both of them recommended enthusiastically the Harbeth's I bought -- just go ahead and get them, especially if you're used to Quads ESL 57. Both of them recommended that I take a good listening to the Guarneri's before buying them...I followed their advice.

Ggavetti, you say that your friends/reviewers suggested a listen to the G's, did you not have an opportunity to do that?
Frankly, IMHO the GH is if anything underrated in its musicality and acoustic perfomance. I teach guitar as a side line and when most students hear my Taylor( That's a
respected US guitar maker) and then hear the GH's play back
of an acoustic guitar recording they are astounded at how close the playback sounds to the real thing!
Enjoy your HL-5's.

...play back of an acoustic guitar recording they are astounded at how close the playback sounds to the real thing!

It is my opinion that a speaker has to be pretty bad to not sound good when playing back an acoustic guitar. Maybe my experience has just always been with good speakers.

Daveyf, I tried both GH's and HL-5's at dealers but I tend to discount these tests because the room configuration and the electronics and the cables used are always different than mine. For me it's hard to judge how good a speaker is without trying it out in my system or in a system that is similar to mine. That is why I think that our opinions can be so different about speakers or components in general. In addition to having different ears and tastes, little changes in one's system can have big changes in how appealing a component it...at least in my experience. So, when I ask for advice I tend to trust people whom I know well, and who tried components for long periods of time in systems that are similar to mine. The reason I got interested in Guarneri's is that I've always been in tune with Ken Kessler advice. On the other hand, the fact that two reliable people who have similar tastes and similar systems to yours basically tell you to lean toward the HL-5's...well, that tells me something. The problem might be that they (and therefor me) might not have the right equipment to make the GH's sing as they should.