Fake Shure SM57s ! How to tell !!

  • Thread starter Thread starter grandmsterflash
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No the grille on mine doesnt spin round.. When i first got it i read on the net that the real one takes so many turns to unscrew, so i tried it, and the top of it just cracked off! The two wires snapped and the thing just fell apart. The true crapness is revealed on the inside. The capsule screws to the body of the mic by a cheap looking bolt which screws into a nut thats been hot-glued in place. I did manage to solder it back together after about an hour of mega fiddly work! I actually bought another one, off amazon marketplace this time, for about £53. This also turned out to be a fake. Id just go to a music shop and pay for the real thing, no hassle, and you can be sure you've got the real deal! If you look on ebay and amazon, its crazy the amount of these that are being sold! There will be the ones for £30 - £50, and then the others for £70 +. You get what you pay for!
 
heres a pic of the insides of a real 57,

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/Accessories/us_pro_R57_content

The fake ones dont have these three terminals, or the embossed + sign next to the posotive pin. Mine just had two wires poking through which were soldered directly to the capsule, underneath where the black grille wraps around. Also if you try to unscrew a fake, chances are the wires will snap off the soldered contacts!
 
grandmsterflash said:
Also if you try to unscrew a fake, chances are the wires will snap off the soldered contacts!
Click to expand...
To be fair, that happens on real SM57's all the time. :p
I've learned to only unscrew a 57 if you really need to (i.e. never unscrew it, unless you the possibility of a solder job).
 
i've been thinking about this for the last couple of days after talking about it with a couple of friends of mine. one who owns a couple of 57s and one who does live sound and therefore see's lots of them all of the time.

how much have they varied over the years? i'm talking about the really small details. i know of at least one mic that was bought brand new from a dealer yet has no printing on it. do the insides change any? i'm sure there are some variations in them somewhere, probably to the point that saying if your mic doesn't have such and such marking then it must be a fake. i think we should take pictures of our mics, inside and out, and where and when we got them or a relatively close idea, and compare them.

i have a mic which i believe to be real. there's nothing on it that looks strang although it's got some differences from one that i opened up at the club the other night which should also be real.
 
Counterfeiters occur but not without help

SHURE has fallen into the same dilemma that many others have found themselves. In the interest of making excessive profits for those at the top, they chose to outsource much of what was once the quality they were known for. Sure the bottom line looks better but Americans are out of work and unemployment doesn't allow much for discretionary spending so they don't buy as much as they did in the past. And even with the much lower cost of manufacture the quality decreases and the prices still go up. When will SHURE and other American companies wake up to the fact we as a country are selling our proverbial souls for some quick money? I would expect to see some of these not quite third world countries residents try to duplicate these respected items to enhance their own lives. Can you really blame them after learning that their employer is paying pennies per hour to produce a product that is sold for a price equal to 3 months of their pay? Let's keep the pride in what we produce in America.

It Looks Authentic, But Can You Be Shure?
March 29, 2007

Shure, Inc. announced today a series of raids in Thailand and India that caught a ring of counterfeiters manufacturing fake Shure microphones. The most recent operation, taking place with the help of a South Asian Shure distributor and Indian authorities has resulted in the arrest of a trader in New Delhi.

The importation and distribution of counterfeit Shure products is an example of the overall problem manufacturers face when they outsource manufacturing into areas where intellectual property laws are viewed with little respect.

“We are committed to protecting our brand and making sure that all of our customers get a genuine Shure product every time they purchase an item with our name on it,” said Sandy LaMantia, President and CEO of Shure. “Simply put, we will not tolerate this activity and will do everything within our means to fight it. We treat this problem very seriously.”

“We encourage our customers to only make purchases of our professional and personal audio products from authorized Shure product dealers, whether they’re buying from a retail store or an online seller,” added LaMantia. “These sellers can be easily found using the Dealer Locator on the Shure website.”

Raids and actions in India and Thailand have recently netted caches of counterfeit Shure products, taking them off the market.[/QUOTE]
 
And where did all of those counterfeit microphones go?
 
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