Does anyone have any reviews on the Sherwood Newcastle brand of receivers that they sell here on the Axiom site? They don't seem too popular, and a search in the forum had 0 hits.

My options are Harmon Kardon, Sherwood, and Outlaw. I'm leaning towards the Outlaw 2150.

Any thoughts/direction? I'm just after a stereo receiver.

IMO there is much better values out there with better features than Sherwood Newcastle. The consensus here would agree. That's why they are not that popular here on this site with recommendations and elsewhere. My personal preferences would be any of the current Denon or Onkyo models for receivers.

If you're looking for stereo only, and don't ever plan to go multi-channel (without buying a new receiver), that Outlaw is going to be hard to beat, especially if you have a turntable. It also will do 2.1, if you want to add a sub. Oh, the EQ loop is great too.

Sure it's a little expensive, and there are multi-channel receivers which cost less than it. But it's not priced over-the-top like some dedicated stereo equipment. It's a very well designed, purpose built piece of equipment.

Oh yeah. For stereo only, the Outlaw is a nice piece of equipment. Pricey though.

Yeah, there's a used Outlaw for $500 that i got my eyes on

Hello Kordeo,

In defense of Sherwood Newcastle, Axiom took on the line because we wanted to be able to offer some customers a receiver with a robust amplifier section. We bench-tested their line-up, and even the inexpensive stereo RX-770 ($299 including delivery) could drive the 4-ohm M80s to very loud, clean levels without a hiccup, unlike some other brands at the time (2002, 2003. .) (Onkyo, Pioneer, Yamaha) which either shut down or went into severe current limiting when driving 4-ohm loads.

So the robust amp section is the main reason; it's also why I've consistently recommended Denon receivers and Harman/Kardon. Outlaw products are quite good. I don't know about the amp section of the Outlaw stereo receiver. It's very pretty, but expensive.

Also, the RX770 has a built-in phono preamp (for vinyl enthusiasts) and plenty of power output, which makes it an excellent value for $299 delivered.

I'll grant you that Sherwood Newcastles are not heavily advertised or reviewed frequently. According to my sources, they do come out of the same off-shore plant as Denon and Marantz units. (That does not make them the same, as each will have different engineers and designers.)

Regards,
Alan

Outlaw says:

hmm, money talks.

and i'm not really concerned about mega volume. My future wife doesn't enjoy 'loud' More about detail/cleaness/imaging

The "detail/cleaness" will be supplied by any competently designed receiver operating within its designed limits. "Imaging" isn't a factor affected by amplification when volume is identical.

This is cool, researching is actually seeming to prove that buying a cheaper product may be just as good for me, in this case. Harmon Kardon gets loads of good reviews on Amazon, although most of them don't sound to audiophilic

**RANT MODE**

I *hate* sites that feature "consumer reviews," Amazon included. For the most part they seem to be along the lines of, "I just bought this yesterday and, wow, it works! FIVE STARS!". You have to wade through pages and pages to find anything useful.

Also, when you search on Google for things like, "Denon Reciever Reviews" you have to go through pages of results that are sites like these before you find *real* and *useful* reviews.

IMHO, Consumer Review sections are one of the worst things to have happened to the 'net.

** END RANT **

Sorry, one of my pet peeves.
snazzed

Same here. I hate most of the consumer reviews also, so I don't think you're alone there. I also hate it when they give it 1 star for some problem that has nothing to do with the product itself, like late delivery, or bad delivery. I see this a lot.

I don't mind consumer reviews so much. They just need to be read as both a review of the product and the consumer himself. If you see something like the person complaining about late delivery in the review you just through out the whole thing as the person being an idiot.

Maybe I'm just good at taking in the whole picture of a product based on the collection of reviews. If something good or bad is repeated in numerous reviews you can probably take that to be true.

Totally! It's called "doing your homework."

So, then, when you DO get screwed, you can become gargantuanly pissed---righteoulsy!

I like reading consumer reviews. Not so much about the subjective nature of the review itself but over a large enough sample of reviews I like to pick up on little things like customer/service related issues and quality control/reliability problems with a product.

I like www.audioreview.com

Reading "music" reviews on Amazon.com has been helpful for me on many buys. Usually if the CD is rather bad, you hear about it especially if there was tons of hype on the release. I agree with Dr. House that if you read enough of them, they provide a nice "snap shot" of what you should expect. Nothing is absolute however. My genre of music likes has drastically changed over the past 2.5 years and Amazon does a nice job of giving me somewhat useful opinions from that same group that like my type of discs.