New York, NY (December 10, 2024)—It’s a sad fact of life that Holiday Retail Mania has evolved into a sort of ugly post-Thanksgiving hangover. Prices so low we can’t print them! Fifty percent off our already low prices! Free shipping! (Well, at least this one is usually true.) And my favorite: Unbelievable deals! Uh-oh…
Last week, an assortment of law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, announced the seizure of more than 3,000 counterfeit Gibson guitars. The estimated value of these instruments on the street at their legit MSRPs would be more than $18 million.
In years past, the list of counterfeit retail goods might have been limited to “mainstream” items such as Rolex watches, Nike footwear and Louis Vuitton handbags. We can now add to that list Shure, Sennheiser and Neumann microphones, Yamaha mixers and power amplifiers, L-Acoustics loudspeakers, audio interfaces from Prism Sound, and Lab.gruppen power amplifiers. Not to mention olive oil. Olive oil? Now you’re messing with the bull.
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Pro audio used to be safe from such transgressions, but the explosion of home recording (and, more recently, podcasting) makes the market large enough that it pays for counterfeiters to manufacture knockoffs. The fact that Chinese factories will essentially build anything you ask—regardless of who owns the intellectual property—makes it that much easier for a counterfeiter to get up and running quickly. People who are unaware that counterfeits exist or can’t hear the difference might not even know they have purchased a fake until someone with more experience points it out. Yikes.
What makes this a serious issue for those working in pro audio is the fact that these are expensive tools we require to do our jobs, not “bling” accessories we’d like to have for a night out.
Take for example the Neumann U87A microphone, which currently sells for around $3,600 from a legit retailer. The U87A Set (which also includes a shock mount, windscreen, wood storage box and cable) sells for around $3,750. That’s a lot of scratch, and it signifies a major investment. A quick look on Reverb shows several suspect listings: one for $2,650, another for $2,800, and another (more realistically) priced at $3,223. All new. The latter listing is complete with what appear to be stock photos of the interior of the mic, including a cutaway of the head grille showing the capsule. Now what would anyone be doing nosing around the interior of a brand-new U87A? Certainly, no good.
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Manufacturers are doing their best to educate consumers on how to discern the fakes from the real thing, but the people who produce imitations are getting way too good at it. Many counterfeiters go to the trouble of copying the exterior finish, head grille, logo and packaging, making it difficult if not impossible to distinguish a knock-off from the real thing. Of course, the giveaway is usually the sound, which is rarely on par with the original.
Sometimes you can spot a fake by looking at the internal circuitry (which may be completely different from that of the real thing) or the wiring (which may use color schemes not utilized by the manufacturer), but by the time you see the guts, your opportunity to return the item may have passed (not to mention that if it is indeed legit, you’ll have voided the warranty). U.S. Government officials are constantly complaining about the forgeries to authorities in China, but they don’t seem to care. Maybe they actually enjoy the fact that these forgeries help undermine other economies.
So how do you avoid purchasing a fake? Purchase from a reputable dealer. Yes, you’ll pay a little bit more, but why gamble your hard-earned cash? The truth is that most recordists can’t afford not to purchase from a reputable seller. As the old saying goes “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Keep that in mind.
