Why not horns?

Kiddman,
You use live acoustic instruments as your template and I happily do the same and this approach has served me very effectively in choosing audio components. You do need to be familiar with real instrument sound in order to determine how and to what degree components deviate from this standard. HP did recognize and strongly advocate this concept and I'll give him cconsiderable credit for making this an important criteria. I enjoyed TAS quite a bit during my introduction in the late 1980s and this continued for about a 10 year period. I admired his efforts but didn't view him or anyone else as an all knowing infallible guru. I also believed that HP truly loves and respects music just as I do.
Charles,

I read HP, JG Holt and the others, starting ca. 1972 or so. It was fun to read about expensive, esoteric gear at the time a/k/a 'audio porn,' but with hindsight, the lasting value of their contributions was, I think, what to listen for- the so-called 'subjective school' of audio. (I also enjoyed Richard Heyser in Audio Magazine, who was far more engineering grounded).
I doubt that any of this reading influenced what I bought at the time, but as my pocketbook allowed, I was able to listen to, and buy, gear that reproduced the recordings with somewhat more 'life.' (At the time, it was an ARC SP 3 -a-1, which was a revelation to me, compared to other preamps, circa 1974, and a pair of 'old' Quads, a/k/a '57's'). Today, when I read these magazines, I do so largely for entertainment. I like Fremer for keeping the torch lit on vinyl, and a few other reviewers (Roy Gregory when he was at HiFi+).
I had occasion to read an old copy of TAS recently and it was a far more ambitious publication 20 plus years ago.
The intra-web has certainly changed things, to allow users to compare listening experiences and share information (as well as provide a huge inventory of old vinyl from across the globe).

As usual, Almarg comes to the rescue with his indisputable reasonableness; in this case, helping to turn the tide of the usual reviewer bashing which is partly what I like to call simple reviewer envy (all that great gear!).

Perhaps the bashers are younger than I and some of the other supporters and are not familiar with the TAS of its heyday; and I will concede that the TAS (and HP's contributions) of the last several years was not on the same level. IMO, the contribution of TAS and HP in particular has done as much (in a positive way) for the health of the industry as just about anyone else including the great equipment designers. His relentless adherence to a standard influenced these great designers to continually improve their designs. No other reviewer that I can think of was as adamant about the concept of the gear always being in the service of the music. Read some of those back issues and you will learn not only about the concept of faithfulness to the sound of live acoustic instruments, but also (via the infamous "surveys") everything from the great concert halls around the world to the great pipe organs of the world; not to mention an incredible (for an audio mag) number of discussions about music theory and pedagogy, and the "Super Lists" of great recordings. Additionally, he did more to create a vocabulary for discussing audio matters than anyone else that I can think of. I think the bashers are taking a whole lot for granted and not giving credit where credit is due.

This is not bashing, just a dose of reality. HP wrote about remaining true to the music, but a lot of his equipment did not reflect that. He's as much of a gear head as anyone, and the gear took precedent many times, as did politics. And anyone in the industry in his hayday knew that well.

The systems always could play loud, and usually did, could go deep in the bass and with a lot of volume, and threw big images. But to get those traits they often veered quite a bit away from truth in tonality.

Readers loved the dream of his equipment and sound, but reality was often not as good as the verbal dream he conjured in readers' heads.

His great gift, truly, was writing in a very provocative way. Nobody could touch that in his prime, and his is still closely chimped in that regard, especially by one print writer in particular.

Harry could have been a great writer in the wine industry, camera industry (especially about Leicas), or many other subjective industries for which he had a love.

But one thing should really be clear: he was far more of a columnist and editorialist than unbiased reviewer.

Part of the bias was an extremely strong anti-horn sentiment, which is how this diversion about writers started. Many folks who would have loved compression drivers coupled with horns missed out on them, and the joy they could have had by listening to some of the great ones, due to reading how they were not true high end products in the opinions of biased opinion shapers in the high end digests.

Perhaps your reality, not mine. I think your comment "The systems always could play loud, and usually did, could go deep in the bass and with a lot of volume, and threw big images. But to get those traits they often veered quite a bit away from truth in tonality." is a gross mis characterization of reality. As you may (or not, apparently) recall his reference systems were broken into categories: large, medium and small. While it is true that his no.1 reference speaker system was the IRS he championed many smaller ones like the Crosby Quads (and who can argue with the "truth in tonality" of those), smaller Thiels, Proacs and Sequerras to name just a couple. But, more importantly, I think you miss the point of the bigger picture. HP was TAS, and the adherence to strict standards of reviewing (flaws and all) and variety of opinion expressed by his chosen reviewers (and subsequent rebuttals) was something that was unparalleled. Sure he was a gear head; so what? That in no way detracts from his loftier contributions. He had a tremendous amount of influence and it is true that he (with a negative review) could cause great harm to a start-up, but on balance his positive contribution to the health of the industry was huge.