My buddy just showed me his brand new Shure Beta 58A that he bought on eBay for $39.77 (with free shipping). The normal street price for this mic is currently $169. The eBay seller still had like eight more left to sell!
I examined the mic closely, and gotta say -- both the mic and the packaging looked totally legit! The only weird thing that stood out to me was that the package included a 15 ft XLR-to-TS cable (along with the normal pouch and mic clip). I "suppose" the seller could have stuck the cable in there as a free gift, but my gut was telling me something was off.
A quick Google search later, and I found dozens of sellers on Amazon and eBay offering popular Shure and Sennheiser mics for a fraction of their street prices. Unless these companies are blowing out all of their popular mics and I didn't hear about it -- it's safe to say the marketplace is being flooded with (likely) Chinese knockoffs. And these are being made to a very exacting standard so that the mics, at least on the outside, can't be discerned from the real thing.
I told my buddy that he should register the mic with Shure and be prepared for a disappointing reply....
A couple years back I recall reading about some Shure knockoffs, but it didn't seem like a widespread thing... But based on the sheer number of the low-priced offerings I saw, it's gone completely out of hand!
So let this be a warning to any prospective microphone buyers out there: If you want to be sure you're getting the real thing, buy new from an authorized dealer -- or alternatively, go vintage, where it's visually obvious the mic has gone through some use. Otherwise it's hard to know what you're getting these days!
I examined the mic closely, and gotta say -- both the mic and the packaging looked totally legit! The only weird thing that stood out to me was that the package included a 15 ft XLR-to-TS cable (along with the normal pouch and mic clip). I "suppose" the seller could have stuck the cable in there as a free gift, but my gut was telling me something was off.
A quick Google search later, and I found dozens of sellers on Amazon and eBay offering popular Shure and Sennheiser mics for a fraction of their street prices. Unless these companies are blowing out all of their popular mics and I didn't hear about it -- it's safe to say the marketplace is being flooded with (likely) Chinese knockoffs. And these are being made to a very exacting standard so that the mics, at least on the outside, can't be discerned from the real thing.
I told my buddy that he should register the mic with Shure and be prepared for a disappointing reply....
A couple years back I recall reading about some Shure knockoffs, but it didn't seem like a widespread thing... But based on the sheer number of the low-priced offerings I saw, it's gone completely out of hand!
So let this be a warning to any prospective microphone buyers out there: If you want to be sure you're getting the real thing, buy new from an authorized dealer -- or alternatively, go vintage, where it's visually obvious the mic has gone through some use. Otherwise it's hard to know what you're getting these days!
Statistics: Posted by flugel45 — Thu Jan 04, 2024 5:52 pm — Replies 1 — Views 62
