Is there life after Harbeth?

Harbeth P3ESR – in a league of their own.

If you read my previous review of the Harbeth P3ESR’s you can easily establish that I am huge admirer of these loudspeakers. In fact having owned dozens of pairs of speakers over the last 20 years including brands such as Proac, Linn, Living Voice, Tannoy, Gamut and Reference 3A to name but a few I have found that the little P3ESRS are the head and shoulders above the rest.

It was with some regret recently, then, that I had to sell my treasured Harbeth’s and opt for a cheaper speaker. The reasoning and detail behind this decision are no particualroy interesting so I won’t go into that here.

Bottom line is that with the Harbeth’s sold I had a budget of around £500 for a new pair of speakers. A considerable amount of money to some – friends wouldn’t dream of spending that on a whole system. But coming from such lofty heights I was concerned at what I would find at a price point almost exactly one third that of the P3ESR’s.

I also had a fairly simple and short criteria for the new speakers – somewhere between what I wanted and what my wife would accept.

Ideally the new entrants would be a stand mount and a similar size to the Harbeth’s and have an attractive real wood veneer.

I looked at many brands from Tannoy, Kef, Dali and Mission but couldn’t get excited by the looks nor the sound of any of them. Not a great start!

Doing some more research I came across a couple of reviews of the Wharfedale Denton. A limited edition update of a classic Wharfedale speaker.

The Wharfedale Denton

They seem to have everything – decent wood veneer, not much bigger than the Harbeth’s and they also had an excellent heritage not only from the manufacturer but also the speaker itself. At £500 they were also within my budget.

As a bonus, having done some more research into the brand it seemed that they take a cradle to grave approach to manufacturing their speakers – designing and manufacturing their own cabinets, drive units and wiring themselves to retain control over every step of the process. They also, apparently, manufacture their own packaging to ensure that their products arrive in the condition they would expect.

Some more web trawling though unearthed a company in Bristol selling the speaker at a special offer price of £350 for a brand new pair. Despite the fact that hadn’t seen the speaker or heard it this seemed to be a bargain too good to miss. I don’t put too much faith in magazine reviews and star ratings but the one’s I read seemed to be consistent with describing the musical presentation of the Dentons and this suggested to me I would enjoy the speaker and so I ordered a pair and awaited their arrival with anticipation.
Part two to follow………..