You can buy Oktavas elsewhare (I just don't recommend it). Taylor Johnson personally tests every Oktava MC012 before he sells it. and if you buy a matched-pair of any model sold by The Sound Room... Well read about that at their site. The point was lots of testing is done.
All should read the March issue of Electronic Musician and read the article of microphone comparisions of 8 different mics (the MC012s are from The Sound Room; and my source is Myles Boise from the r.a.p. newsgroup, who is a good personal friend of the author).
However, you can only buy RTT (Russian Transducer Technology) products from The Sound Room since Taylor Johnson is the Founder and President of RTT; and he owns The Sound Room.
Any of you can e-mail Harvey Gesrt the "pope" of the rec.audio.pro newsgroup and owns Indian Trail Studio
www.itrstudio.com and ask him what he thinks about Oktavas and RTT products from The Sound Room. In fact, better yet, go do a search in the r.a.p. newsgroup for "RTT" or "The Sound Room" or etc. and see what everyone else thinks.
Considering how nearly everyone agreed that these Oktavas and RTTs from The Sound Room were nice mics (and not just for the money), I tried it out myself. Now, I'm here on the BBS everynight drilling it into everyones head. It seems like a single night can't pass without me recommending something from The Sound Room.
As Robin says:
"We all take the risk, we all reap the benefit."