ausrock said:
...The following is a comment by someone who saw the mics close up, I believe at the Summer NAMM. For my part he shall remain nameless unless he chooses otherwise and I hope he doesn't mind my quoting his comments from another BBS...
I confess – it was me. Actually, I was the one who told Alan about the B5.
I was at Summer NAMM and had already chatted with Alan, Justin and Brent, (great folks, btw) and strolled over by the B’ger booth where I noticed the B5. Of course I knew right off they’d copied the C4, so I grabbed a brochure and took it back to Alan. Thinking he already knew about it, I jokingly made reference to it as “B’ger’s C4”. He was kind of like… “Huh???” That’s when it hit me that he didn’t know.
I really felt bad for those guys because I knew they’d been working on it a long time. Heck, I’d even seen a proto of the C4 there the year before. Coming from an engineering/manufacturing background, I know the dis-heartening feeling when years of work is copied by others and they freely profit from your design, so I sympathized greatly.
Alan had a very good attitude about it, though. I’d have been rip-roaring mad, but he just shrugged it off and said something like “Oh well, stuff like that happens sometimes.”
Funny thing was, Brent and Justin made a bee-line over to the B’ger booth (with me following) where Brent just reached up, grabbed the B5 off it’s display, screwed off the capsule and started looking it over right in front of the B’ger guys. They just stood around whispering to each other - probably plotting an escape route in case Brent and Justin started kicking their butts!
After we looked it over, Brent screwed the capsule back on and we just walked away. Those B’ger guys never said a word to us.
Brent was quick to point out that the B5’s inferior capsule grille would hurt the high end, which tells you B’ger must have been forced to change the design (probably by 797 for fear loosing of SP’s business) by some degree. In other words, I see no other motive for intentionally making an inferior “copy”. Later I looked up the frequency plot graphs of the two mics and they were as described in ausrock’s post.
Anyway, ever since that day I’ve wondered about the possible similarities. Alan was nice enough to jump into this thread and inform us of the situation (something other company owners rarely do). Alan said that 797 told him they were different, he believes 797, and I believe him. And to me, it’s kind of uplifting to think that maybe there is some justice to the situation since B’ger didn’t get away with copying them completely. The B5 is probably a Nady (also from 797, I believe) with interchangeable capsules and switches. It for sure has the same grille!
Bottom line: you can
not get a new “C4” for $79. After all, that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it?
