Buying amp over-seas?

T

TooHotRecords

New member
Hey guys,
I would just like to know if there are problems with buying a Power Amp from the United States when I live in Australia.
From what I can see the Alesis RA series have switchable voltage at the back. Does that mean it can be used in Aus?
 
As long as it can be adjusted to work on 240 volts you should be fine. FYI, import duty becomes payable if the value is above Aus$1000 but I doubt you'd pay that much. The only other thing to investigate is the shipping/postage which can eat up a fair bit of the savings on heavy items like amps.
 
Bobbsy said:
As long as it can be adjusted to work on 240 volts you should be fine. FYI, import duty becomes payable if the value is above Aus$1000 but I doubt you'd pay that much. The only other thing to investigate is the shipping/postage which can eat up a fair bit of the savings on heavy items like amps.
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Yeah no way. Im looking up to about 400....:facepalm:
I need to get 110-150w per channel at 8 ohms. It's proving a challenge.
 
Yeah. Amplifiers are stupidly expensive down here. I sometimes just open the Thomann website and drool over the stuff you can get there for less than half the price of here.
 
Bobbsy said:
Yeah. Amplifiers are stupidly expensive down here. I sometimes just open the Thomann website and drool over the stuff you can get there for less than half the price of here.
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I don't. Too depressing!
 
Hmmm...maybe we should start an Australian-based internet shop specialising in Audio gear. We could way undercut everybody else's prices and still make a fortune on everything we sell.
 
Bobbsy said:
Hmmm...maybe we should start an Australian-based internet shop specialising in Audio gear. We could way undercut everybody else's prices and still make a fortune on everything we sell.
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That's probably what all the other companies already selling there thought.
 
Probably.

But an awful lot of stuff seems to be double the price here and that's not all down to shipping costs (especially if you consider how much is manufactured in the far East anyway).
 
The federal government has dismissed calls to modify or scrap the GST exemption on import purchases of $1000. The whole retail paradigm is changing. Prior to the online retail phenomenon, Australian retailers in general had a captive market, and could pretty much charge what they could get away with. I am fairly confident that Gerry Harvey did not personally become a billionaire by providing consumers with outstanding value for money.

Now, it is much easier for consumers to compare prices, and buy from overseas. Aussie retailers are going to have to find ways to become more competitive in order to remain viable.

Even if the GST exemption was completely abolished, in many cases I am sure that it would still be more cost effective to import.

Sorry if I seem cynical about local retailers. I have friend who is in retail, and I remember him boasting about products he was sourcing from Taiwan and the massive markup he was putting on those products.
 
I just had occasion to compare the prices of washing machines, fridges and TVs for a friend thinking of emigrating from the UK. It was hard to find identical models but, where I could, appliances are now a similar or cheaper price here in Queensland to the UK.

So...if Hardly Normal and The Good Guys can sell a washing machine for the same price as Currys in the the UK, why does Musiclab want almost double the UK price for interfaces and mics.

(And don't get me started on USA pricing which is cheaper again....)
 
Bobbsy said:
I just had occasion to compare the prices of washing machines, fridges and TVs for a friend thinking of emigrating from the UK. It was hard to find identical models but, where I could, appliances are now a similar or cheaper price here in Queensland to the UK.

So...if Hardly Normal and The Good Guys can sell a washing machine for the same price as Currys in the the UK, why does Musiclab want almost double the UK price for interfaces and mics.

(And don't get me started on USA pricing which is cheaper again....)
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Business model - as you probably remember I recently went interface and monitor shopping. In the end I bought an RME Fireface UCX and Dynaudio DBM50s from Sound Devices in Sydney - the ONLY specialist recording shop in the Sydney CBD.

It was quite clear that Sound Devices are doing it tough despite the recent collapse of Allans, the only other place in the CBD you could have gotten anything to do with recording, but who are more a generalist music store.

What did surprise me was that neither the interface or monitors were actually in stock at the store. They did have a set of store DBM50s I could evaluate, but basically I'm buying the RME unit on faith. Both had to be shipped from the distributor, which took a couple of days.

This wasn't a big deal but consider the extra expense involved in all of this. If I can't just rock up at a retail outlet, test all options and say "I'll have one of these and one of these, wrap them please!", hand over my credit card and walk out with my purchases, then what's the point of the retail outlet - it just embeds extra cost into things.

They didn't make much margin on the sale and I'm not having a swing at Sound Devices because they're helpful people and price (relatively speaking) well. But will they still be there in two years time? I wouldn't bank on it, which will suck because then there's nowhere to speak to an actual human about recording in the CBD of the largest city in this country..

The times, they are a-changin' indeed.
 
I have been finding that the prices are getting closer, years ago it was awful. The problem in Oz is that we have an extra middle man, the wholesaler, who is the importer of the brand, overseas brands have their own warehousing and distribution. It is due to the lower number of sales in Oz.

Power amps are also getting cheaper, for example have a look at the Crown XLS series, I know they are for PAs systems, but there is no reason why they would not work in a studio the XLS1000 is $429 delivered free (evil bay) and delivers 215 watts channel at 8 ohms and a lot more with lower ohms. I actually have one of these on my PA to run monitors and it works great.

Alan.
 
Excellent points, Armistice.

Home recording/pro audio is a niche market unlike home appliances. However, it's a niche market composed of hundreds (or thousands) of different makes and models, making it impossible for any one store (even in the CBD of the country's largest city) to stock a comprehensive range.

I have similar situation with the suppliers I tend to use in Brisbane--they've been good to me over the years with things like invitations to "try the new SE mics" events and, as far as possible, I try to support them. However, just as with the store you mention, I'm not convinced they'll still be there in a year or three.

There IS a business model that can work for one or two suppliers--but it certainly won't help both of us. The specialist supplier I tended to use in the UK converted to a "mainly internet sales" business model but maintained a small number of physical stores to act as showrooms. I was lucky to be within commuting distance of the largest of these stores.

This compromise meant that their prices were still higher than pure box shifters like Thomann--but they were able to get close enough that I was willing to spend a bit more for the physical presence to actually SEE and HEAR things and also the customer service if something went wrong.

Of course that business model is in a country with 65 million people crammed onto an island that would fit into one corner of one Australian state. The distances and sparse population make Australia a much more difficult proposition.
 
witzendoz said:
Power amps are also getting cheaper, for example have a look at the Crown XLS series, I know they are for PAs systems, but there is no reason why they would not work in a studio
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As an aside away from our Aus cost discussion, Crown amps turn up all the time in studio monitoring situations and sound/work well. We had tons of their 1U amps driving monitors in edit suites, control rooms etc. No point discussing models because this was 20+ years ago though!
 
witzendoz said:
Very rare to find much Carvin gear in Australia.

Alan.
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...which is possibly a good thing. My memories of Carvin amps from the time I spent in the UK was that they were pretty unreliable and had a tendency to release the magic smoke pretty often--they were even worse than Behringer and Thomann T-bone stuff.

To be fair, my last experience was something like 7 years ago and this was in a live sound/PA setting rather than a studio--but I'd approach Carvin with caution.
 
Bobbsy said:
...had a tendency to release the magic smoke pretty often--
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:laughings: We call that a blown smoke seal, people say, "Whats wrong with my amp, smoke came out" and we answer, "you have a blown smoke seal and all the smoke that makes it work has escaped".

Alan.
 
Bobbsy said:
...which is possibly a good thing. My memories of Carvin amps from the time I spent in the UK was that they were pretty unreliable and had a tendency to release the magic smoke pretty often--they were even worse than Behringer and Thomann T-bone stuff.

To be fair, my last experience was something like 7 years ago and this was in a live sound/PA setting rather than a studio--but I'd approach Carvin with caution.
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You must have been doing something terribly wrong because in the past 20 years I've never had a piece of Carvin gear go bad. Their power amps are practically indestuctible. Years ago Carvin tested the durability of their amps by throwing some of them across a parking lot to prove that they would still function perfectly after taking a beating.
 
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