Fake mn3007s

[DK1]

Just a quick reminder to be careful buying ICs off ebay. Bought 4 mn3007s a few weeks ago. They came with the Panasonic Matsushita logo and everything... And bogus. They were over $6 each after shipping.

Spent twice that much on them from small bear, but at least they work. Buy once, cry once.

DK1

[digi2t]

Same deal here, except it was TDA1022's. Like you, ended up getting good ones from Smallbear.

[Mark Hammer]

I got some from the now-defunct Active Surplus in Toronto, some years back.  The guy had them sitting loose in a parts drawer, with no anti-static protection whatsoever (BBDs are generally reasonably hardy but still amenable to static-related damage).  The ones that I bought all turned out to be just fine, but I mention this because, once you get down to the last dribs and drabs of NOS, sitting in drawers around the world, the vendor who gathers them for later retail distribution may be selling stuff that was stored in a similarly risky fashion and compromised.  If they are willing to test the units, then the labor costs of doing so are passed on to the customer.  It costs more, but the purchaser has the assurance of quality, and the vendor also knows the consumer can trust them in future.  Folks who sell as-is cheaply on e-bay are not necessarily intending to cheat anyone, but they do not necessarily plan around you being a repeat customer, either.

And, FWIW, I can't imagine anyone making a point of selling "fake MN3007s".  The number of customers required to justify the likely overhead costs to print teeny little part numbers on every chip is well in excess of what is out there.  And they most certainly would not be able to sell a large quantity to EHX or Behringer and get away with it.  In short, making counterfeit BBD chips makes as much sense as making counterfeit dollar bills.

Might they be selling "untested" BBDs of unspecified functionality?  Yes.

[Scruffie]

I got some from the now-defunct Active Surplus in Toronto, some years back.  The guy had them sitting loose in a parts drawer, with no anti-static protection whatsoever (BBDs are generally reasonably hardy but still amenable to static-related damage).  The ones that I bought all turned out to be just fine, but I mention this because, once you get down to the last dribs and drabs of NOS, sitting in drawers around the world, the vendor who gathers them for later retail distribution may be selling stuff that was stored in a similarly risky fashion and compromised.  If they are willing to test the units, then the labor costs of doing so are passed on to the customer.  It costs more, but the purchaser has the assurance of quality, and the vendor also knows the consumer can trust them in future.  Folks who sell as-is cheaply on e-bay are not necessarily intending to cheat anyone, but they do not necessarily plan around you being a repeat customer, either.

And, FWIW, I can't imagine anyone making a point of selling "fake MN3007s".  The number of customers required to justify the likely overhead costs to print teeny little part numbers on every chip is well in excess of what is out there.  And they most certainly would not be able to sell a large quantity to EHX or Behringer and get away with it.  In short, making counterfeit BBD chips makes as much sense as making counterfeit dollar bills.

Might they be selling "untested" BBDs of unspecified functionality?  Yes.

Sorry Mark, have to disagree with you, resurfacing of chips is rife, even with original working chips (they're removed from vintage equipment and then reprinted I suppose in an effort to make them seem like a new product?).

Thousands upon thousands all suspiciously with the same date codes for chips removed from various equipment and when put under scrutiny having clear differences to originally printed chips, lack of surface borders, incorrect fonts and logos, chip top and bottom surfaces clearly not matching etc. I have a few 'MN3009' that are actually MN3007 and that chip is in even less demand than 3007. This is a problem not limited to BBDs too, it goes on with a lot of chips, there's a good site showing tell tale signs of resurfacing and chip faking that someone will likely link to.

The supply of working 3007 recently started to dry up, something that was a long time coming really, the party can't go on forever.

And as to your comment about them selling to EHX or Behringer? When EHX began producing the Deluxe Memory Man with tap tempo (1 second version) that is exactly what happened, they got a massive batch of fake 3005s and had to cease production until the Xvive chips came out recently, there should be mention of it by the EHX staff on the EHX forum if you do a search.

[Mark Hammer]

How on earth does one make any money doing that?  That's the part I don't understand.  I understand that not all chips produced on a line are good.  Some can end up in the reject bin, and if someone sells a box of rejects to a reseller who doesn't test, then there can be wads of non-functional chips being pawned off as functional.  But there, the original manufacturer has undertaken the labor and cost of marking the chips.  What sort of profit motive would there be in acquiring chips, removing the part numbering and then replacing it?  That's the part I simply don't get.  And in the case of "fake" MN3005s, just how many chips have that same form factor?  Mis-marked MN3005s that are really MN3008s where someone at the factory neglected to change the instructions on the part-numbering machinery, and no one kept a proper record of it (possibly for fear of getting sacked)?  That, I understand.  Deliberately mis-marking chips just seems implausible.

Or is there something about the machinery involved in printing teeny tiny numbers on chips (and removing what used to be in the same place) that is a great deal easier and cheaper than I imagine it to be?  I'm not calling you out or anything at all like that.  There are just some missing bits of information here that would make the notion of purposely mismarked chips a more plausible idea than it strikes me as being at the moment.  If anyone has any inside knowledge about how these things get made and marked, please do chime in.  This is one of those items I haven't seen on "How It's Made". 

You can sell bad acid to the Hell's Angels once, if you leave town quickly.  I don't know how one can continue to sell it from a storefront, though.  Wouldn't the vendor expect some sort of legal retribution from EHX?  Mike has been screwed over by Russian gangsters in past, and learned how to take them on.  I can't imagine him taking this lying down.

[Scruffie]

I can't say how it's done but it definitely is, to a decent standard too, used to be sometimes you could rub the new ink off and find what was originally on the chip but now they're mostly properly marked. As to making money, economies of scale? Sweatshop labour?

I did actually get a relabelled MN3008 that turned out to be an MN3005, I wasn't complaining about that fake

I would assume what happened with EHX is much the same as when people tried to order group buys of MN3005 in the past, they did it through a parts broker and got 200 or whatever chips that all looked the same and were all non-functional but there were refunds from the broker at least and then the broker stopped trying to source them. With ebay from Asian sellers, getting refunds can be a lot more difficult.

Here's some brand spanking new SAD1024 for example, ever seen one looked like that? https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/SAD1024/708370_1032839814.html

[reddesert]

I don't understand how the economics of faking ICs work, and even if they work at faking thousands of parts, I don't understand how they work for selling a few fake parts at a time (but perhaps we should consider that they are faked thousands at a time, and then fobbed off to middlemen who sell both real and fake parts on ebay). But this is something that distributors in the mainstream electronics industry are concerned about, so there is pretty good evidence that it does happen. See for example http://www.aeri.com/counterfeit-electronic-component-detection/

[digi2t]

I don't think that the mis-marking of IC's is restricted to "a" chip, or even two, or three. Like Mark points out, there's no money in that. I believe that the practice probably cover hundreds of different IC's, most directly IC's that are, or are about dry up in the supply chain. Take an 8 legged IC that costs 2 cents, stamp it with markings of an IC that generally goes for $5, dangle it on Ebay for $1. Now, the price point is the hook, and it's double pronged; Firstly, it's cheap enough for a buyer to jump on it, no matter how much their brain screams at them, saying that it's too good to be true. It's almost Pavlovian in nature. Shit... free shipping to boot! Second, it's cheap enough that when the buyer finds out it's a dud, many just take the loss. Whoever does make a claim gets reimbursed. That's it, the end.

I think it's about the volume of IC types covered. Besides, most all these vendors sell so much other shit in their stores, I'm pretty sure that they don't give 2 bits if they pass off the ocassional fake IC. It's a dog eat dog world my friends.   

Personally, I think it's a hardware version of Stuxnet... but you didn't hear it from me. 

[DK1]

FWIW, the ebay seller refunded me immediately. I checked their feedback, and couldn't find any mention of fake chips. However, I bought 4 out of the 10 they had, so perhaps the others haven't tested theirs yet, or I just got some duds.

They were indeed a purveyor of a ton of crap. The chips were labeled as new. Not NOS or take-offs. It's possible they weren't fake, so much as rejects... But the seller didn't ask any questions at all when I requested a refund.

[PRR]

> costs to print teeny little part numbers on every chip

Such a printer is in most factories, not just electronics. A worker stays late and runs thousands of unlovable no-value chips or other products through to give them new identities.

It can't be a big-buck operation. But it may be nearly zero overhead for the devious person. He's not even buying the ink.

A further factor in our world: buyers buy chips then do not use them right away. A year later they may finally build, and may chalk-up their failure to building mistake. By the time (if ever) they are sure they have been cheated, they can't remember where they got them from, the seller has changed names, or the refund period is expired. And because the scam is SO low-cost, the seller can afford to issue refunds for the few that do get called-out in reasonable time.

[PRR]

> printing teeny tiny numbers

That's part of the wonderfullness of this. As you know, high-quality graphic printing on something as large as a stompbox costs big money. But printer cost declines rapidly with size. I have not seen one, but I can imagine a 1" print zone being smaller than a drill-press and not more expensive. Not a first-buy for a home shop, but something a factory would have for even very occasional small-part printing. And not something the boss would be watching all the time.

As for the old ink: 13yo girls with a tray of MEK. Probably also slipped out of the factory free.

[imJonWain]

a part too is just how unimaginably cheap the labor rates over seas are and making a penny at a time is better than nothing.  While there is a bit more profit involved but something like 1/4 of all the Sans disk SD cards in existence are supposedly counterfeits, we had a batch of them at my work. 

[Mark Hammer]

Well, my underlying rationale for rejecting the "counterfeit chips" idea has been that it's a lousy unsustainable business model.  On the other hand, there seems to be no shortage of lousy unsustainable business models out there in the world, well beyond what takes place in the world of chips.

I'm still somewhat sceptical, but you folks are softening my stance.  I guess the model for this is "Office Space".  You know, a quarter penny here, a quarter penny there, and a few million transactions later, you're rich!

[bloxstompboxes]

I'm still somewhat sceptical, but you folks are softening my stance.  I guess the model for this is "Office Space".  You know, a quarter penny here, a quarter penny there, and a few million transactions later, you're rich!

I'll make sure you get another copy of that memo, Mark.

[Mark Hammer]

And please return my stapler when you do.

[deadlyshart]

> costs to print teeny little part numbers on every chip

Such a printer is in most factories, not just electronics. A worker stays late and runs thousands of unlovable no-value chips or other products through to give them new identities.

It can't be a big-buck operation. But it may be nearly zero overhead for the devious person. He's not even buying the ink.

A further factor in our world: buyers buy chips then do not use them right away. A year later they may finally build, and may chalk-up their failure to building mistake. By the time (if ever) they are sure they have been cheated, they can't remember where they got them from, the seller has changed names, or the refund period is expired. And because the scam is SO low-cost, the seller can afford to issue refunds for the few that do get called-out in reasonable time.

Yeah I think it depends on this. I also got some dud/fake MN3007's from ebay. I ordered them a while in advance of needing them, cause I knew they would take 1-2 months to get here. When they did and I tried using them (see my thread on figuring this out with the Small Clone), and figured out they were duds, I'm sure had I complained to the ebay seller they would have refunded me/sent me new ones. But it literally isn't worth the time/money. So they pretty much got me.

[lmkv15]

Hi,
most of this fakes are relabled 0,30ct. chips MN3207. The faked MN3007 will be hot in a MN3007 application, and works fine at a MN3207 App.

regards Uwe