Microphones and Things
Well, well well... I never knew a place like this existed. Thanks Azn for telling people about my site. The boost in traffic has inspired me to stop playing Half-Life and try to finish uploading sound clips and listing the rest of my products. For those of you suspicious about 'hidden marketing techniques', you ever stop to wonder if these entire forums are a marketing technique for zZounds? Or maybe they just pay a bunch of money to homerecording.com for advertising. Who knows. Perhaps I'll try and get my banner up here too and see what happens.
One thing that concerns me somewhat (and one of the things that inspired me to write) was the story about using my ad to get a discount at Guitar Center. While it makes my smile to know that somewhere, a Guitar Center got shafted, I should also fill you in with a little inside info on how the system works (assuming you don't already know):
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All dealers must abide by what is called a Minimum Advertised Price (M.A.P., commonly known in the industry as 'Maximum Asking Price') or else they can get in trouble with their manufacturer for advertising below this price and potentially get dropped as dealers. This is how Guitar Center and Sam Ash and all of those places can feel perfectly safe in doing their 'Price Matching Guarantee'. Here's why -
If you read the fine print, you can't just bring in your receipt from another store where you paid less for something and get them to price match with what you paid: the price matching only applies to regularly advertised (not special sale) prices. I suspect that the large chain stores have enough clout to actually negotiate what that M.A.P. is, though I can't be certain - one thing is for sure, none of the chain stores will advertise above this M.A.P. except perhaps on more obscure items or special orders where you get to pay full retail.
What does this mean? This means that anyone that beats Guitar Center / Sam Ash's advertised prices is most likely in violation of the M.A.P. agreement, and by bringing in the ad to the store, you are alerting a major chain store with a lot of clout with the manufacturer of this. If someone were to make a lot of sales under the M.A.P. and even threaten to make a dent into the profits of the major chain stores, you can bet that the chain stores will complain to the manufacturer and the independent dealer that you saw that great deal from will no longer be allowed to sell products from that manufacturer, and said chain store can resume its normal pricing structure.
While the other side of the coin here is that if the M.A.P. didn't exist, it would be easy for independent dealers, who don't spend as much money promoting whatever given product in question as the chain stores would by selling for such small margins that they could perhaps afford due to lack of overhead would de-value the product, causing the large chain stores to stop carrying those products, stop promoting those products, inevitably hurting the manufacturer by phasing those products into obscurity.
You bring up a good point by mentioning that you can get most MXL mics on E-bay. This is a perfect example of the proliferation of under-m.a.p. sales causing a large chains to stop selling those items. I know that musicians friend has demanded to have their own exclusive MXL product lines (which btw aren't as high quality as the non-exclusive mics) and I know that many of the local stores don't sell most of the MXL line, and thus, don't promote them - and so nobody knows much about say,
the V77S.
Speaking of E-Bay, as a dealer privy to all the prices that dealers pay, it makes me suspicious of many of the things I see on E-Bay. Sometimes the prices that things are being sold for are actually less than *I* can get them for when I'm dealing straight with the manufacturer. You might think this is a good thing, but I end up asking myself 'where did these people REALLY get the equipment that they're selling?' and 'is it REALLY new?', because if they're really getting that stuff new from the manufacturer, they are losing a lot of money, especially when you consider E-Bay final value and listing fees. Keep in mind that because of these fees, an independent dealer NOT selling on E-Bay will always have a lower overhead than a dealer who does sell on E-Bay.
Technically though, since I'm giving away the shock mount free with the microphone that I'm selling, I'm not violating any M.A.P. agreement - though this merchant business _is_ run by humans, so I'd rather stay just under the radar and not put this theory to the test. If you see the deal suddenly disappear, you'll know what happened - though as MXL tends to allow rampant violations of the M.A.P. to occur on E-Bay (or maybe those people selling those mics aren't really dealers, who knows) I probably shouldn't worry. At least I'm TRYING to follow the rules. Also, just because I'm not allowed to advertise below a given price doesn't mean that I (or anyone else for that matter) am not allowed to sell an item below M.A.P., if someone were to call and ask for the price. See above about M.A.P. and price matching only applying to advertised prices.
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Anyways, I'm glad I found this place. It makes for some interesting reading, although some of the info on some of the main pages is a little out of date. Also I think it can be a waste of time to argue about 'my mic is better than yours' or 'this mic sounds like poop' without sound clips to back up what you're saying and to let people form their own opinions. Anyway, a week or so from now I'm going to be getting my hands on one of these 'B1's that everyone is talking about and comparing it with the V67G as well as a few other mics I use around here at my studio. If anyone has any instruments they'd like me to play through each to compare, let me know. I'm also taking requests for other gear experiments / comparisons (if I have them) on my own forums. Maybe a V67G with and without
a Presonus TubePre? I'm also interested in hearing feedback about what kinds of recording gear packages you'd like to see for sale. If it sounds reasonable I might just make it happen.
Wow, look at the size of this message. Sorry about that. I type about as fast as I talk and tend to ramble. I hope someone finds something I said useful. Oh, and be excellent to eacother.