Everybody keeps using the word "made" without making any distinction about what that actually means. xstatic seems to be the only one here to understand the distinction between "fabricated" and "assembled". The parts from which the monitors are "made", e.g. the cones, the crossover networks, the power switches, the voice coils, etc. are neither designed nor fabricated in China. The drivers come from Italy. I'll bet even money that the power switches come from Korea. Perhaps the cabinet itself is manuafctured in the States, though that is probably also done in a low labor-cost country. It could be anywhere from El Salvador to the Belgian Congo, who knows?
Perhaps some of the solid state circuit components (e.g. resistors, capaciters, diodes) may be locally-supplied, but I'll bet that even China imports most of those from Taiwan, Korea, or Singapore. They almost certainly don't come from the US; and that's true for every brand of electronics out there, no matter how USA-sounding their name; there are very few solid-state component manufacturers in the Staes any more.
The point is that stuff these days is
assembeled in a certain location, but that location is almost always entirely different - and usually half-way around the globe - from where it's component parts are
fabricated. And even more so, it's only rarely that all the constituant parts are fabricated in the same location or even country.
So what if the Chinese are
assembling the newer Mackie stuff? They are just putting together a kit, they are not building a monitor from scratch from raw materials. Zho Mar Tenh can use a Japanese-built automated soldering station and a Phillips screwdriver the same way and just as well as Jose Martinez or Joe Martin can.
When one talks about failure rates coming out of a factory (be it Chinese or Martain), 99 times out of 100 that has to do with poor quality control in the fabrication of a component, not in the assembly of the final product. Many Chinese condensors got a deserved bad rap for this a few years ago because the actual condensors they were fabricating were of poor or uneven quality. Their condensors may still have a bit of a ways to go, but the Chinese aren't stupid (nor are their non-Chinese contractors like Rode and MXL); they are learning and getting better at it every year.
But those are fabricated components, they are making the condensors from scratch. This is not the case with something like Mackie monitors. I have 7-yr-old 824s staring me in the face right now. They were assembled in the USA. I couldn't give a rat's ass; I know that is mext to meaningless these days because I know they are over half filled with parts from scattered locations from all over the globe. They are no more "American" than my Toshiba laptop with it's Intel chipset (US), Phoenix BIOS (US), LG LCD display (Korean)and Cubase software (German) is "Japanese".
I suggest that if someone is worried about whether the eBay 824s are manufactured in Swaziland or Tanu Tuva, they should perhaps be more worried about the fact that they are *used*. What kind of environmental conditions they have been used in and how much they have been used (not to mention the question of the integrity of your average eBay slime dog) can potentially have a MUCH greater bearing on their quality than who turned the screwdriver.
G.
P.S. This all reminds me of when I used to sell electronics 25 years ago. We sold probably a dozen brands of TVs. At the time, those brands included "American" brands such as Zenith, Magnavox and RCA (perhaps another brand or two that I forget offhand.) Every time I customer walked in and said they wanted an American-made television (usually an older couple
), I told them the truth. There wasn't a single TV sold that was American made in those days. The closest we had was one single model of Sony - the KV-1913R, if I remember correctly - was actually made in Mexico. The only major brand model of TV that was made on the North American continent was a Sony. All the "American" brands were actually made in Japan or Korea.
Of course the fact that I told the truth instead of being a good little sales boy by ignoring the truth and steering them right to
the Zenith like they wanted to believe is a good indication of why I didn't stay in sales for very long
Nowdays it's even more acute. The brand names themselves aren't even American any more. Japan, Korea, China and Singapore have actually purchased the names themselves. "RCA", "Magnavox", "Memorex", etc. are no loner even companies...at least not in the traditional sense. They are brand names only, the rights to the names themselves having been purchaced by overseas companies with entirely different names.
