The Kiss of Death

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wheelema

wheelema

Boner-obo
When I first found this board, not so many moons ago, the Marshall MXL V67G was priced just under $300 discounted. It was highly praised and enthusiastically recommended. Harvey Gerst auditioned it, recommended it, and purchased it. The Studio Projects C1 was also brand new; it too was highly praised and enthusiastically recommended. I do not recollect the price of the C1 at that time.
Now, the MXL V67G can be had for less than a hundred bucks, while the C1 has maintained a higher discounted price point of just under $200. I rarely see either mic praised as efflusively as they once were, though through personal empirical evidence I have seen the V67G praised more.
From what I have been able to tell nothing has changed in these mics other than their discounted price, but some people I have spoken to think that the V67G is a less desireable mic than the C1 because it is cheap. If the price dropped to $50, or $10, it would become less desireable still. The reasoning is that the mic is competing on price because it does not have the quallity/sound of the more expensive mic... if it did, well, then, it would cost more!
When a manufacturer drops the price of an excellent mic, are they, in fact, giving it the Kiss of Death?
 
No ,not IMO. When a manufacturer drops the price of an excellent mic, I stop living off porridge & go buy it :)
 
Well, in the case of the v67G, specifically, the price of a decent output transformer would come out to almost half the price of the mic itself.

Kind of makes you wonder what kind of corners they might be cutting to get the price down there like that.

Some models, like the earlier Rode NT1's and just about everything ever made by AKG . . . the mic it is now is very different from the mic it was when it first came out. Shit, the NT1 has changed capsules at least twice without the public ever being officially informed about it. And if you're like lowbeam, waiting for the prices to come down . . . sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for.
 
Well, if the mic has been compromised by the manufacturer switching to inferior components - and it's hugely noticeable, & generally recognised as such - then it's no longer an excellent mic is it?
If the manufacturer is reducing prices, and not quality, because of market forces ( which does happen) - I'm there.
A lot of us are working on an almost non-existent budget here. I'm not "waiting" for prices to come down, but if they do - for the above reasons - it merits investigation.
 
Does anyone believe that the quality of the V67G has been compromised from what it was several years ago?
 
In the case of many of these mics not only is there the question of competitive pressures but also the matter of exchange rates. Moreover the biggest cost of electronics is usually the R&D and to set up a production line. Manufacturers try to recover these as quickly as possible. Once those have been recovered the marginal cost of each microphone is not that high.
 
wheelema said:
Does anyone believe that the quality of the V67G has been compromised from what it was several years ago?
Click to expand...

I realize this is just personal taste, but I happen to think it's always been compromized. :D And no, this isn't a gear snob thing. I think it sounds pretty bad even for a cheap mic.
 
This talk of price is interesting. Didn't Neumann recently put up prices across all it's products? A couple of years ago I bought my TMM 103s for £460 each. Now they are retailing at £650. Not good value for money IMO. However, in some cases when the price is raised a supplier can sell more product because of a perceived difference in quality. It's all about how consumers view the product.

Personally, I'm suspicious about audio products under the £150 mark. Maybe I'm a marketer's dream?
 
Jeppo said:
This talk of price is interesting. Didn't Neumann recently put up prices across all it's products? A couple of years ago I bought my TMM 103s for £460 each. Now they are retailing at £650.
Click to expand...
I had originally thought they went up as a result of the US – Euro exchange rate, but I if the Euro price went up too, I guess not...
 
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