kojdogg
bollocks redux!
Disclaimer: This is a wild theory with no basis in fact or even reasonable suspicion, fueled by my own gear lust:
Every time I see a good deal on a used SM-57 these days I always hesitate, because I'm not sure if it's fake or not. The fakes are good enough that if you don't know what to look for, you might not know that you even have one. It made me think-- 57's are some of the most durable mics around-- they last a long time, can take a beating and still work, and they hold their value pretty well cause they're cheap to start with. As a result used 57's pop up all the time. They are studio stalwarts that have so many uses. Shure keeps manufacturing them and they can't be too complicated to assemble so they must be piling up.
Who better then to finance and promote a Chinese counterfeiting scheme than Shure themselves. If you can never be sure if you're getting a real one if you buy new ones from non Shure dealers on ebay, or used from any number of places, it kind of makes the idea of paying $10-30 more from a dealer/retailer more appetizing.
So that's my conspiracy theory. Shure is counterfeiting their own mics with cheap Chinese labor to drive consumers to only buy new SM-57's from official Shure dealers.
Every time I see a good deal on a used SM-57 these days I always hesitate, because I'm not sure if it's fake or not. The fakes are good enough that if you don't know what to look for, you might not know that you even have one. It made me think-- 57's are some of the most durable mics around-- they last a long time, can take a beating and still work, and they hold their value pretty well cause they're cheap to start with. As a result used 57's pop up all the time. They are studio stalwarts that have so many uses. Shure keeps manufacturing them and they can't be too complicated to assemble so they must be piling up.
Who better then to finance and promote a Chinese counterfeiting scheme than Shure themselves. If you can never be sure if you're getting a real one if you buy new ones from non Shure dealers on ebay, or used from any number of places, it kind of makes the idea of paying $10-30 more from a dealer/retailer more appetizing.
So that's my conspiracy theory. Shure is counterfeiting their own mics with cheap Chinese labor to drive consumers to only buy new SM-57's from official Shure dealers.
. if it's to the point where some random newbie dude is going to offer up some lame diss of me in the form of a question (this isn't jeopardy, though i like the extra question marks for emphasis), then i just give up. 
