A new fake mic from China - this time, the Beta 58

[CoolCat]

I never ran a business let alone a massive successful business.
Seems two paths is like Neumann staying away from China, raising the prices of their Hi-End mics and making cheaper TLM series 102/103....or the other path is Shure and move everything to Mexico/China/ <next cheaper country> to build their KSM and SM series...
not sure what AKG did? they split and moved etc...had famous mics and now many versions of the same and Austria to somewhere?
Fender did the Fullerton California to Corona California to Mexico and the Squier series (anywhere made)..Japan line..

Business vs Engineering...always a bit of a war to decide,quality vs profit, and survival etc....

Bootlegs from B-stock or back-door shipments for tax free , wink-wink, say no more! deals....

I recall decades ago mfg was being sent to foundrys and the foundry (makes money per parts shipped) had de-calibrated the test equipment not to fail any parts so their numbers looked better than they were. Problem is the end customer using these parts in HDTV's had a bunch of fails in complete built TV's so it was a huge loss for them and they stopped ordering from the company, who then shut down the foundry as the biggest customer cancelled the business with them.
The other thing I recall is the original engineered products had welded metal that lasted forever and was expensive part so the business wanted cost cutting so the welded metal turned into plastic+ glue and it failed about 4-5yrs. sometimes much sooner.
The welded metal passed Military spec testing , hot, cold extremes vibration extremes etc...while the cheap plastic+glue part failed all the time basically crap , but had a much higher profit margin...lol wow?

 

[ecc83]

I watched a short programme yesterday about VW cars using Very High Strength Steels in their new models. This is thinner and thus lighter and gives better MPG and less CO2 pm. The panels are glued not spot welded!

One can only hope VW have done very detailed and extensive life tests of those cars!

One of the main problems of having your mnfcting 3000 miles away from 'the office' is that the buggers WILL change a spec or a component and not tell you. Not necessarily for a worse component but you really need to know for specification, legal and sometimes safety reasons WTF EXACTLY your amplifiers are made of!

Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

I'm vaguely involved with a project - but money but it's a shambles. The have a quality vs cost ratio - as in the 'importance' so it might be 80/20 for some aspects - so cost is 80% quality is 20% where a non-technical person sets the importance, but in other areas, like a carpet, cost is way down and quality more important. The tender is suposedly set in stone but everyone knows it's a sort of wish list you are tendering for and it will change. Like they install a trunk system with local small network cabs, and then an arts person says these ugly boxes have to go and it will be centralised. The AV firm said LED screens would be better and cheaper, but the arts person wants a ceiling projector. They point out all the cable systems are around the edges, and the ceiling is 1800s and digging holes in it to thread cables is out. Worse, the rooms have huge windows and the only projector capable is huge! I sort of giggle when western companies really believe NDAs and contracts will save them when production is remote. We all know the way we react to edicts from people abroad. We have no intention of doing what the (enter country of choice) tell us! Yet we expect it from the Chinese?