HH Scott 299B with Harbeth/low-efficiency speakers


Hi all,

I'm looking at buying a restored Scott 299B amp. My speakers are Harbeth compact 7s. Does anyone have experience with this or other Scott/Harbeth pairings? I've read that the vintage Scott amps are great with Klipsch and other efficient speakers, and worried that the 299B may not have the power to cleanly drive the Harbeths. Any thoughts appreciated!
saturdaysun
I say go for it , your Scott 299B puts out 50 watts and your 7's are 6 ohms nominal and the Harbeth website in parentheses says (easy to drive) and the sensitivity is 86db not ideal but doable. It depends a lot on the size of your room and listening levels but I would not be surprised if that's an excellent combo. Great looking amp btw!
I tried using  Scott 222C with a set of Harbeth Super HL5, previous model in the 5 series, and it was not a good combination. My recollection is that the 222C uses EL84’s and only put out 20 watts so this may not be relative to your setup.

For what it’s worth, I have not found any tube amp to sound good with any Harbeth speaker. I know lots of people like tubes with them and YMMV. I have owned the Super HL 5’s, the Monitor 40’s and now have the Super HL5+ and tried a number of tube amps with all of them and did not like the results at all. Again, this is only my opinion and only you can tell what you will like.

Good Luck!

"I say go for it , your Scott 299B puts out 50 watts"

Sorry, that was the amps total rated wattage. Restored, depending on the output tube used, output will be 20-25 wpc, same as the 222C. Great little amp but definitely needs a more efficient speaker than the Harbeths.

Try a PrimaLuna integrated with 6550's. A quality product with plenty of power!

With B&W DM602 Scott299b will sound best you can hear. They're very affordable and incredibly simple to pair with nearly any tube amp. In fact it's their one of the most successful model with definitely one of the highest performance per budget. Also look into JBL 4312 studio monitors as they define music so great especially with tube amps.