I bought a crazily cheap 'Neumann' TLM103 and it's really decent!

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rob aylestone

rob aylestone

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I thought I'd share this. when I find stupidly priced Chinese gear, I buy it and test it out - and I saw a TLM103, with the usual badge, and it cost £12.95 plus tx and delivery - under £20. Expecting it to be really awful, I put it up against a real one - and then had to spend ages double checking I'd not messed up the routing, because the differences were very small. I figured maybe I had used the same track twice, so flipped the polarity and was suprised when it did not vanish when the two were put together - instead, the differences were there, and it just reduced in volume and went a bit thin.

I discovered when editing the video that the neumann red logo did NOT say Neumann at all, just used the same colour and shape - so it's not a counterfeit, just look alike. It's different height and diameter, has a different thread on the bottom and is lighter.

Left me a little confused - £20 vs nearly £900 - that should mean big differences. Anybody here got good hearing? Love to hear what you think.
 
Pretty Cool - where did you get it?

The Neumann has more bass and high end - you can hear it when you strum the guitar.
 
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Close though, but £800 close? Aliexpress. It had gone down to 12.90 tonight. Worst case, its 20% VAT, free postage and then £12.50 handling for parcelforce.UPS etc. on speakers its marginal, but headphones let you hear the differences, but they’re small aren’t they?
 
Great video and comparison. I was about to order two of them, but sadly they will not ship to Canada.

Oh well.

EL
 
That happens to you too? Quite a few seller will not ship to the UK in the same way.
 
its amazing they can build decent items so cheap.
it is metal, the mesh headbasket looks nice, the paint is maybe even better, imo, with the gray.
obviously the price has something.
a little EQ to taste wont be impossible.
 
Welcome deal was $12.76 USD to the US. Was going buy two but they would only allow one. Went back to order a second to see what the regular price would be and it was $20.21 USD. Still pretty good, but I'll just stick with one to try it out.
 
I've noticed this on a few items. They won't sell multiples. Dynamic pricing I think it is called. Perhaps the price is tweaked so when you order another you pay a bit more? It doesn't seem logical? AND why is Canada unable to take advantage of some products?
 
I don't know, maybe it's because certain companies don't allow their products/or retailers to sell in some countries. Back in the '80's I wanted a particular Icom radio that was not available in the US because of the frequency range. It was available in the UK and I had a buddy that flew for a charter company based in the UK. He found a local amateur radio supply store in the UK that had them. He bought it and had them ship it to me in the US. interesting that they had no problem shipping it here, but I couldn't go in a local store and buy it.
 
One thing that I've noticed is that you need to pay attention to what you are ordering. I looked at both the Kets 103 and the Bei Fei Li 414 and they list both 25 and 34mm capsules, and I saw one 414 listing that showed a 16mm capsule taking 5V, which I am thinking could be an electret.

The price varies with the capsule. I looked on AliExpress and the 103 is $20 for 25mm but $46 for the 34mm version. The 414 is $57 for the 25mm and $82 for 34mm. While it's not a massive amount of money, it makes me hesitate to deal with those sites.

On the other hand, Ebay listings for the 414 is $157 and $209 for the same mics, and that's sourcing from China. They don't even list the 103 clone.
 
rob aylestone said:
I've noticed this on a few items. They won't sell multiples. Dynamic pricing I think it is called. Perhaps the price is tweaked so when you order another you pay a bit more? It doesn't seem logical? AND why is Canada unable to take advantage of some products?
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I order one from AliExpress - $12.83 - i notice when I went to get another is was $23 - then $12 - they seem to have a price variable filter or something - anyway I am waiting on it - delivery says 10 days - so we’ll see - I couldn't tell what comes with it - Did you get a Shock Mount, XLR Cable and the MIC?
 
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I got a decent shock mount, but no cable. Let me know how it goes.
 
Papanate said:
I order one from AliExpress - $12.83 - i notice when I went to get another is was $23 - then $12 - they seem to have a price variable filter or something - anyway I am waiting on it - delivery says 10 days - so we’ll see - I couldn't tell what comes with it - Did you get a Shock Mount, XLR Cable and the MIC?
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I'll be interested in hearing your evaluation. Rob's sounded fairly decent, and for the price of a Big Mac meal, you almost cant go wrong!
 
Papanate said:
Okay - @ $12.83 how wrong could it be? Actually….
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Well, QC could suck so that it sounds nothing like Robs, or it could have horrible hiss, in which case you can just save it to use it as a prop in the next video of a band playing in a rain storm! 🌧️
 
subjective mental thoughts but for some reason having the "different brand name" and not selling it as a fake NEUMANN label makes me more
interested to buy it. who cares? I don't know.

its a decent looking mic and I guess I will never understand the Chinese and cheapness to build items with labor and raw materials like anyone else?
US minimum wage is $7hr twenty states and $14ish for 30 states....parts costs are higher I assume being flown in?
Made in England, can carry a higher tag too etc..etc..

a decent looking mic for $12? and even popping in a capsule DIY in that body wouldnt be wasted, per the pictures. Its metal body, metal mesh...hmm, interesting.
$20 $25 its still kind of mind blowing.
 
@rob aylestone so you tested the "fake" against your own "real thing" but how much variation is there between authentic TLM-103s? Reason I ask is that in other types of gear -- I'm mainly thinking outboard -- there is significant enough variation for, say, Universal Audio to find it worthwhile to model 3 different LA-2A compressors as plugins.
 
Serendipity Records said:
@rob aylestone so you tested the "fake" against your own "real thing" but how much variation is there between authentic TLM-103s? Reason I ask is that in other types of gear -- I'm mainly thinking outboard -- there is significant enough variation for, say, Universal Audio to find it worthwhile to model 3 different LA-2A compressors as plugins.
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That’s because there were slight variations over the years - the early-'60s LA-2 , the mid-'60s 'Gray’ version, the late-'60s 'Silver’ version and early 70s Solid State LA-3 - The Silver version has a faster time constant - at least faster than the other two tube versions - I haven’t heard a whole lot of difference between the Early 60s and Mid 60s Gray version - just aesthetic differences - and the LA-3 is a different compression - one because they moved away from tubes - some guys say the early LA-2A were better on Bass that the later one - honestly I don’t hear it - I can hear a slight difference - but I don’t know if that was the age of mine or component differences.
 
Serendipity Records said:
@rob aylestone so you tested the "fake" against your own "real thing" but how much variation is there between authentic TLM-103s? Reason I ask is that in other types of gear -- I'm mainly thinking outboard -- there is significant enough variation for, say, Universal Audio to find it worthwhile to model 3 different LA-2A compressors as plugins.
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I have two 103s bought years apart. One second hand. Being honest I just them as stereo pairs so no way are they matched but they seem to work together well
 
rob aylestone said:
I thought I'd share this. when I find stupidly priced Chinese gear, I buy it and test it out - and I saw a TLM103, with the usual badge, and it cost £12.95 plus tx and delivery - under £20. Expecting it to be really awful, I put it up against a real one - and then had to spend ages double checking I'd not messed up the routing, because the differences were very small. I figured maybe I had used the same track twice, so flipped the polarity and was suprised when it did not vanish when the two were put together - instead, the differences were there, and it just reduced in volume and went a bit thin.

I discovered when editing the video that the neumann red logo did NOT say Neumann at all, just used the same colour and shape - so it's not a counterfeit, just look alike. It's different height and diameter, has a different thread on the bottom and is lighter.

Left me a little confused - £20 vs nearly £900 - that should mean big differences. Anybody here got good hearing? Love to hear what you think.
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Hmph. They do sound quite alike. Bit more bass on the real one. Quite a shock considering the price difference. China hates Canada. That's probably why they won't ship here.

Thanks for the video. Hpmh. Makes me wanna buy 5 or 6....but this is basically counterfeit theft, as it's called the same thing and it's a legitimate current product from Neumann.
 
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