Counterfeit parts

[mac]

Well, in my country there are many faked electronics parts entering via Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. And this is nothing new.
In fact there are lots of faked goods coming from there...


*******************
***Made in China***
*******************

I AVOID BUYING THINGS WITH THAT LOGO
Unfortunately sometimes I have no choice. I just take chinese stuff to a church and have it blessed by a priest, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

mac

[trendyironicname]

The guy over the mirage line got sent home because he was frying those freaking expensive high wattage transistors(his one wardrobe sized cabinet probably had $40000+ worth of those buggers).  I can't help but to think maybe..  I mean, the company was nortorius for trying to save money any way they could.  The owner is like a millionaire but he seriously bought computers from yard sales to use in the back.  Windows 95, if we were lucky.  I can see him "buying them off the back of a truck." It was kind of unique that as big as the heatsink is on them that he managed to burn up those but have enough finese to not melt anything else.I think he could have a case for getting his job back.  The place was notorius for shoddy crap all around.  Google'd them and it was interesting to see the world's view on my past hell.

[trendyironicname]

"These amps may come with either M25C25 finals (mine) or MRF 648, as indicated in my included schematic- which bore very little resemblance to what my unit actually had in many parts of its cct. This model has obviously been the subject of may factory tweeks and revisons.(Lots of long flying leads on caps/resistors attached to those power transistors!) I read from another user that their techs try everything except VOO-DOO to get these amps to stablize."

I was one of these voodoo techs... eh the shame.
Right now, I'm in that transition from voodoo tech to voodoo engineer. I'll come out of the same school the "gruesome twosome" came out of.  The engineer's were terrible.  I think the tech's were way better.  I don't know how they made it into school, much less out of it with a degree(the engineers). 

I still side with the techs. 

You're supposed to make it work, sure.  But if the design is terrible, there's only so much you can do.

I feel really dirty right now.

[Mick Bailey]

Hey, It doesn't help when the good guys turn to cheating you.

I wanted a British made speaker for my recently-built combo and looking around I ended up paying over the odds for a Celestion "Ipswich England" Speaker. Except it had a 'made in China' sticker on the box.

So who pockets the profit? and who's really ripping us all off? The once tried-and-trusted companies are relying on their venerated brands implying timeless virtue. They attempt to fool us with "Engineered in the U.S." or "designed in the UK" labeling. When does an amp with an India-made case and stuffed with Chinese electronics suddenly become "Made in England"? There must be some legislation that sets a minimum component count in order for an item to be 'made' somewhere.

Or perhaps it's like 'meat' pies in England that can be composed of sphincter-gristle and bone slurry and still be called a meat pie. I like how they put pictures of farms and cows on them to make you think they're something they are not. A bit like Celestion.

[frank_p]

You're right Mick,
And A real DIY stompbox must be done with pencil leads as resistors and aluminium foil + saran wrap for the caps.
Otherwise you did not do "youself" an off.
I'm on your side ! 

Oh! I forgot:  lemon batteries also !

[GREEN FUZ]

...
Or perhaps it's like 'meat' pies in England that can be composed of sphincter-gristle and bone slurry ...

Mmmhh!! , sphincter-gristle.

[Mick Bailey]

You're right Mick,
And A real DIY stompbox must be done with pencil leads as resistors and aluminium foil + saran wrap for the caps.
Otherwise you did not do "youself" an off.
I'm on your side ! 

Oh! I forgot:  lemon batteries also !

I've just made a radio with every component made that way - Just like the old days.

And it works!

The painful Irony is that after dark the strongest signal is Beijing radio. I'm not kidding.

[frank_p]

You're right Mick,
And A real DIY stompbox must be done with pencil leads as resistors and aluminium foil + saran wrap for the caps.
Otherwise you did not do "youself" an off.
I'm on your side ! 

Oh! I forgot:  lemon batteries also !

I've just made a radio with every component made that way - Just like the old days.

And it works!

The painful Irony is that after dark the strongest signal is Beijing radio. I'm not kidding.

This is the best one of this topic...  This is REALLY funny. LOL

[Paul T]

The "made in china" that you see on anything simply means it was assembled by cheap labor- as in :______________________ (YOU fill in the blank, ok ?)

As far as a DIY person, I much prefer to be able to do as much as possible on my own.
Example: enclosures/chassis made of aluminium and/or wood, I wind my own power transformers for solid state and tube projects (preamps, amplifiers and other special gizmos), I drill everything, I make my own faceplates and paint jobs...etc...

Now, I think i've included pretty much everybody who reads this forum !

As a buyer/consumer of electronic parts, I want honesty from the seller. If I'm buying a NOS 12AX7... it better be a NOS 12AX7. If I order a few transistors, say, AC128 GERMANIUM TRANSISTORS from AMZFX... well... I don't want to be cheated out of this (and I know Jack Orman would not do so).

When you order something "made in China"... anything goes.

In fact, I also built my own radio, a few years ago, using parts I found at fleamarkets. I like to tune in to "TIBET INTERNATIONAL FM", but since a few weeks ago, all I get on that frequency is "Beijing FM"... go figure !

Also (this is true, I s**t you not), I found a dozen NOS tubes, 12A*7; RCA, National, Amperex, Westinghouse, Marconi, Phillips. None of these were made in China. Ever heard of a NOS tube from China

I built a little radio with these tubes... and I went back in time !

So, if any of you are wondering who's the man in the Marilyn Monroe sex film (which was recently bought for 1.5 million $ by a New York businessman)....
...well.... yours truly !!!

http://www.xbiz.com/news/all/92442

Cheers !

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

It's horrible to contemplate, but the ultimate winners are going to be Behringer - because they are up-front about being Made in China, but they are actually TOTALLY in China & supervise the entire process. So Behringer is made in China & thus inexpensive, but also guaranteed to meet a certain standard.
In Australia, we saw local manufacturers - who had a good reputation - start buying Asian product & rebadging it. Well sooner or later some absoulte rubbish came through & that was the end of the good name of the company.
There was for a while the belief in the West that it was possible to 'design in the West, manufacture in the East' but I believe that the R&D eventually flows to the manufacturing site - and I think history is proving me right.
Will people pay more for a superior product? They always SAY they will - but when the chips are down, the $ wins. For 95% of people anyway.

[mac]

The Made In China Syndrome is just a consequence of people low standards.

mac

[R.G.]

You completely miss the point if you think counterfeiting only equals China.  Counterfeiting is a world wide problem.

For instance, the practice of reselling already-picked-through germanium devices as usable probably qualifies - selling something that is marked as a desirable good, but really is known not to be.

Low quality is the inevitable result of pressing only for low price. There is some history on US manufacturing from about a century ago that would disgust you. We've just been squeezing out the fraud for a century. Much of the third world still has a century or two to go.

China, like any other place is not monolithic. It is entirely possible to get high quality goods from China. It takes work. That's part of what I do professionally: demand and get that quality.

A few decades ago, goods from Japan were laughed at as low quality imitations. Then a few years later I was forced to sit through quality circle meetings to learn how the Japanese made such high quality stuff and why American goods were such low quality jokes.

Don't let yourself take the easy way out by thinking that problems with counterfeiting and poor quality is purely a phenomena from China. It's a global problem.

[frank_p]

The Made In China Syndrome is just a consequence of people low standards.

mac

The standards move with how much money a Ci is able to gain, by what is demanded by consummers and by standards associations independence and power.  (In Asia, America, Europe, etc. etc.)

Chineses have a more powerful economy and some production from China is now moving to Vietnam and Cambodia.  Check out if their standard will not go up, like it did in Japan.  And then watch out.  The poor countries of the Asian world, the ones who had been harmed by conflicts may be the next to carry the "cheap" label while Chinese will kick their ...
And it might go well over Asia.
This is the ways of money and industrialisation, if corruption will not rot and suck out the profits of the workers, like it happened with the elite of Russia  (for an example in a communist gov.).  It would really be interesting to have the point of view of some Asian DIYer here.  Just ask an Australian also, I am sure they feel what is brewing up over their country.  China industrial organisation in some of its sectors is incredibly superior to most Western ones.  It "MIGHT" show up I think.  While the cicada plays guitar the ants are working (for not a lot of money, but they keep on)...

Will people pay more for a superior product? They always SAY they will - but when the chips are down, the $ wins. For 95% of people anyway.

For musicians by profession and adolescents (and the rockers that stayed there  ), it seems so...
If stompbox would have a fretboard, perhaps we would buy more "Made in Mexico", ermh... excuses "MIJ" ones.

[frank_p]

Damn! R.G. is always on the spot  faster.  Should have looked the red warning, you never know who is behind it. At least, it was in the same perspectice.  Ouf!

[mac]

I just expressed that actually China is selling worlwide cheap but unreliable goods. And they are the #1 source of many counterfeit products. Also there are many countries in Africa, LatAm and Asia that just live from the land and have no industries, they must import everything, and since their poor, they need China. So talking about China is almost like talking worldwide. Let's hope they begin to make better products in the future, but surely some other country will take its place if that happens. Needs of the market.
But I also mentioned the problem we have with our neighbour, Paraguay, and I should add in less degree with Brasil. And some domestic, mainly in the textile industry.

Does it worth buying counterfeit parts? In my experience, NO. I build quality houses and I use good stuff. You can't imagine how many things I have to buy daily, just take look into your house. From nails to bricks to tools to ovens to heaters to... And workers salaries. It is better to pay for qualified people, not "counterfeit" and cheaper ones. Counterfeits products do not survive the hard conditions at a construction site, nor the use of my customers.
Another investors I know use counterfeit, low quality or stolen stuff, but people paying top money for a house notice the difference. So I'm doing better than them, and avoid headaches.

mac

[demonstar]

I think some people are assuming all China's products are rubbish. I think there could be something that people are missing about this. I'm not sure it's China I think it's just down to the age old saying...

"You get what you pay for"

If you buy knock down price chinese products I guess you've got to accept knock down quality. There just appears to be a lot of this poorer but cheaper stuff comes out of China. It's just offering another price band on the market for lesser quality. Nobody is getting cheated or hard done by though. If you're not happy with the cheaper lesser quality that comes from china, dig a little deeper and pay a bit more but get better quality products.

Just as a side note about a year ago I got two pairs of mini pliers at a local hardware store for a couple of quid. They are awesome and I like them so much now (a year later) I've contacted the company to see if I can purchase some more to complete the set. And yes they are still working! 

[JasonG]

Looks like Its time to take apart a few amps and caps. I am getting a bad felling in my stomach 

" I just take Chinese stuff to a church and have it blessed by a priest, cross my fingers and hope for the best. "
Mac your awesome ! Ha!

Steve thanks for going the extra mile to make sure your products are good!

[Mick Bailey]

In general, I feel that quality worldwide is suffering due to pressures for manufacturers of decent quality products to stay in business against a background of cheap goods. Replace a metal part with plastic, use thinner guage steel, use die-cast zinc alloy instead of machined brass.

A few years back I rented a place that had a 30 year old AEG washing machine. That machine was still going strong, had components you could replace or service and was solidly built. I decided to go shopping for an AEG machine, but didn't buy in the end because I couldn't tell them apart from any other Zanussi/Bendix/Hotpoint on the market. They'd pretty much sold-out in order to compete on price.

I'm a strong believer in durability. If things last, the world needs less of them and you save in the long run - it means less raw materials and less pollution. This is not to say that Chinese goods can't be durable, but most high street shoppers only look at the price tag and cannot assess how durable an item might be. Chrome plated plastic looks pretty much like chrome plated steel.

A low price tag means that broken items get thrown away rather than repaired and the mountain of household goods down our local dump saddens me. I often 'liberate' some of these. I got a strimmer that needed a new pull-cord, a mower that needed a carb adjustment and no end of other goods such as radios and electrical equipment that needed a simple repair. My favourite guitar was being thrown out because the strings had broken, so the guy left it in a shed for two years before loading it into his car with bags of garden rubbish.

In fact, my PC is a throw-out from someone who wanted to upgrade. I've now been using it as my only machine for 2 years - he was taking it the dump.

I do buy Chinese goods, but with my eyes open. I don't like to be duped, like the Celestion incident. I bought a very cheap CO2 rifle that is made in China. It's sold as a Chinese product, says Made in China on the box and is stamped the same on the breech. It's a copy of a now-obsolete Crossman. It needed some work to get it working smoothly, but the overall quality is reasonable and it's made of steel with a properly hardened barrel. All parts are replaceable and easily reconstructed in the home workshop. It will probably outlast me.

The problem arises if you don't know something is counterfeit and you expect that part or item to conform to the quality and performance standards of the genuine part. Medicines are now being targeted by counterfeiters and often they contain little or no active ingredients. In every other respect they look correct, with accurate packaging and the same look-and-feel as the originals. Hospitals the world over are finding counterfeit drugs and medical products in their own dispensaries.

There's probably no industry that isn't challenged by counterfeiting. In the car and bike world this has been going on since the dawn of motorised transport - 'pattern parts'. They even used to copy the packaging but deliberately mis-spell the name, like Handa or Suzeki. In the 70s most of this stuff was coming from Japan, though.

[puretube]

Ch*na currently got the worlds most stringent RoHS laws...  (anybody knew that already?  )

makes it a little harder to sell that up-growing market there our junk 

[Mick Bailey]

ROHS doesn't stop them selling children's toys with lead in the paint. Law is one thing, enforcement another.