You guys have
way too much time on your hands...
A couple of things that should probably be clarified... when Sennheiser bought Neumann Gmbh and opened Neumann/USA, M-A was one of their original 10 dealers. The management of Neumann/USA contacted us to be a dealer, if I remember correctly, in around 1992 (we sold no new equipment at the time).
At the time, we were a firm that specialized in "vintage" equipment, especially 'vintage microphones'. Over the years they had sent several of their management team/"product specialists" up to M-A to get Neumann history lessons (ironic ain't it).
For the first several years of the relationship between our two firms, M-A sold far more 'vintage Neumann' product than 'new Neumann' product... the ratio, at least dollar wise was probably around 10:1.
So M-A finding the odd 'vintage Neumann' here and there and offering it for purchase is actually a bit more 'in character' than the sale of new Neumann product. It also doesn't directly benefit Neumann/USA, nor Neumann Gmbh.
When Neumann/USA had a major problem with gray market activities... M-A worked with them shoulder to shoulder to help minimize the damage that it was causing (funny how they conveniently forgot that part ain't it).
Right up until last week (Thursday to be exact) Neumann had selected M-A to be one of only 10 dealers in the US for their "Solution D" microphone... but were kind of upset that I said that we'd have to hear it first and evaluate whether or not it would fit with our current offerings [as we do with every product].
Somehow, they were under the impression that because it was a "Neumann" we should blindly accept that it was "great"... did I mention they'd be telling me that they'd send one over for 'evaluation' for the last 2 years? I took a quick listen to one two years ago at an AES show in NYC... at the time it had some pretty major flaws, so I could understand why we hadn't seen one for the last two years... but who knows if they ever fixed those flaws or not... hence why we had to hear it before we'd
add it to the roster.
One of the main reasons you could only find TLM-103's and KM-184's on our site is because the vast majority of the product they are currently manufacturing isn't all that special... the possible exception to that is the M-149 (I wrote a very nice article with some application notes for their website about this mic... in retrospect, I should have charged them, but they were seen as 'family' at the time) and perhaps the M-150 (which they have also refused to send in for "review"... so I am indeed working on 'reputation' when saying that it probably doesn't suck).
Yes,
the U-87Ai is indeed probably the most commonly found lg. diaphragm FET condenser on the planet... it is not worth more than $2k, which is what they go for these days. There are 10 microphones that do what they do, as well if not better, that are less expensive, and equally effective. No one in our joint would recommend them, so we didn't stock them.
For the "history lessons", the articles for their website (I actually scribed a couple for them), the assistance on their battle with gray marketing... we were told that if we didn't raise our prices they wouldn't ship us product. Well, whenever anyone gives our firm an 'ultimatum', we always go with the second half. I got on the phone with the president/CEO of Sennheiser [US] (the parent of Neumann/USA) and he berated me about "my language"... [obviously, the brother hadn't read the recent 'Tape Op' interview... oh well...].
As for the picture of the Neumann CMV-3 microphones and the guy with the bad haircut... those microphones have been referred to as "the Hitler mic" long before I became an audio engineer (gee, a little knowledge of Neumann history rearing it's ugly head)... and as for M-A having 'less than competitive prices'... well, we really do... well, not in comparison with many of the 'box houses', but in comparison to other pimps that work with something that approaches our level of knowledge and service... we're damn competitive in the price department.
To that end, we all felt that the TLM-103 was an OK "my first Neumann"... and $650 was about all they were worth. After the price increase [dealer cost went from like $575ish to $632 +/-3db] we were going to raise the price to like $725... but they told us that if we didn't raise our price to $975 (unlike a lot of shops with websites, the prices on our website reflects the actual price of the unit... we don't play "let's make a deal" on the phone... the price on the site is the price... period), they wouldn't ship us product. Well fuck that.
There are a myriad of professional audio equipment dealers throughout the world. Not every dealer is going to be the right dealer for every client. We have never pretended to be the right dealer for every client.
While we're on the subject... while I'm the loud mouthed asshole that kinda plays 'frontman' for the organization, and I am the "buyer" for the firm... our staff extends well beyond me... so all this 'Fletcher this, Fletcher that' is at times rather flattering [or not]... but the fact of the matter is that we are a team of dedicated professionals... it ain't just one asshole [hell, they won't even let me 'write up' orders... I'm not allowed to play with the 'accounting software'].
I hope this clarification serves to clear up any remaining questions about our firm, and what led to our fallout with Neumann/USA.
We're also going to 'sellout' Sennheiser headphones and not 'reorder' [which happen to be an excellent product... but much like Universal Audio isn't permitted in our shop (they lied to us), nor Millennia Media (they fucked the guy that designed several of their products)], we tend to occasionally shoot our selves in the foot by sticking to our twisted sense of "what's right" and "what's wrong"... and voting with our check book.
At the end of the day, we feel like we've "done right" by our clients, and by the designers we represent... and that's really what matters most (at least to us).