jeff,
i hope not.
sherwood and sherwood newcastle are made by the same company so i would expect similar traits from both of these lines. pointing out that sherwood is junk could give some insight into the performance of sherwood newcastle. just as lexicon and hk share similar technologies by being designed by the same people, you could presume that the sherwoods would be also. however the difference is lexicon companies are good and sherwood companies are not. sometimes companies that make crap can also make candy, but not too often. usually bad design plagues their whole line because much more time is spent in developing the top line and then they let what they found there trickle down to the others. if what the others are getting is junk, then you can certainly expect the products above them are junk as well. further if a company was self-respecting (i.e. put out high end products that were well regarded) then they would not let themselves produce such an inferior line, and instead focus of what makes them so great (the forementioned high end product) rather than waste time with inferior products.
oh and harman international has a couple more companies in it than lexicon and harman kardon, however they are huge, so the correlation between their different brands is less, but still obvious to most people.

www.harman.com to check it out for yourself:

mark levinson
revel
hk
lexicon
infinity
jbl

just to name a few. all on the list are pretty well respected. the list on sherwoods site is of a whole other class imo. but hey, what do i know?, my last name isnt mackwood.

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