Harman Kardon equipment from the 90's... how good was it?

The reason I'm asking is, I found an HK 6650R integrated my dad had around. It's in very good shape, so I decided to play with it. Sounds great, except that the pots seem a bit dusty, and there's lots of noise when I turn the balance, bass or treble pots, and sometimes one channel stops working (unless I move the pots again... I guess it's too dirty).

Anyway, I went over to harmankardon.com to see what kind of info I could find. I also used Google. Apparently, said model was one of the premium integrated amps from H/K, and some magazine in the UK claimed the retail price was 900 pounds (!!!).

The manual itself says the amp is good for 70W RMS at 8 ohms, but that it has a "special circuit" that can send an instantaneous 70 amperes to any channel. Sounds like a lot to me....

Anyway, I was wondering... is it worth it for me to fix this amp, and use it as a separate system, or was H/K never a very good brand to begin with? Reason being, I can use it as an amp for my subs if it isn't that good...

 

The only Harman Kardon I bought in the 90s was their top-of-the-line CD player. It played redbook CDs fine, but had a real problem with DTS CDs, a lot of dropouts.

 

i owned an HK CD player in the late '90's, and it was absolutely terrrible. it broke twice, they gave me an upgrade on the third one, and it was worse than the first two.

renny

 

Some of it was really good, and some of it was really bad. Amps and preamps were pretty good for the most part. Some of the CD transports were a bit suspect.

 

Sound-quality-wise, it should be a nice integrated amp. I own two of their tape decks. Had an issue with the first one I bought, but H/K ended up replacing it for me with a newer model with Dolby C...and back in its day, their cassette decks were VERY good sounding. One other thing they did in their cassette decks (which bled over into other lines) was their "ultrawideband" circuitry. IOW, in their tape decks, the electronics themselves had a range that was far beyond what we could hear, even though the cassettes themselves only recorded to 22kHz (w/ metal tape). The thinking, IIRC, was that the electronics were overdesigned so they would not cause any distortion or overload in the signal path. My CD-301 tape deck is from the mid 80s, where the newer one was probably from 1990 (which I used mainly for playback). Not sure about later products, but a component that is basically all electronics isn't going to give you any trouble other than the dirty pots. Plus, the current capability of that unit is impressive. Clean 'er up and see how you like it--you might find it's a keeper!

Back in the 80s, they used to make a slim receiver, about half-height, that came with that frosted champagne front panel on it. One of these days I'm going to look for one--always thought it was neat.

 

The only peice of H/K gear I've ever own was the Signature 2.0 pre-amp. I believe it came out in the late '90s. Served my needs pretty well, it was my first step from the world of receivers into pre-amps/amps. Sound was good, and build quality was above average.

I would say that piece is worth fixing.

 

Nope, Javier, it's worthless...no good. I'll PM you my address.

IMHO, I would put them on par with Adcom, in terms of sound quality. Different sound of course, but a similar objective--sound that is a step above all the mass-market stuff out there. (Although I can't vouch for any of their gear since the early 90s.)

 

Well, I have no personal experience with this model, but, FWIW, the Orion blue book says it was made 92-93, 100W per channel, came with a remote, and listed for $800. There was also a HK-6350R, same time frame, with 70 wpc, for $500 list, and a HK-6950R, 170 wpc, for $1300. I'd say give it a cleaning and try it out...

--Roger

 

I think Adcom is way better than the HK stuff.

 

adcom is far, far superior to HK.

renny

 

I had a CD changer - forgot the model #. I bought it refurbished from DAK or one of those catalog places. The circuits on the display panel soon burned out. It was fixed under warranty, but the shop told me it was a problem w/ the model in general, not just my unit. It worked fine after that. Sound was pretty good, but the Denon I replaced it w/ is better.

The design was odd, too. The controls were under the tray, so when you had the tray open it was awkward to see and use the controls under it.

Doug

 

I agree! HK is more on par with Onkyo, or some of the upper Sony stuff.

 

Today, maybe, but weren't they a pretty respected independent company at one point, before they became corporate box-pushers (like what happened to Advent, KLH, Infinity, Polk, Boston Acoustics, JBL, C-V, Fisher, Pioneer, etc., etc.)?

 

FWIW, I have a 2-head H/K cassette deck still kicking and it remains the master playback deck whenever I'm cutting commercial tapes to CD-Rs. But it sounds like you could fix this amp yourself with a can of contact cleaner on the pots.