On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:18:51 -0700, Jon Casamajor wrote:
>Their is a local distributor here on L.I. that sells a cheap knockoff of
>LMR400. They call it CA400. (Comes from China.)
>They sell it for .59 per foot.
>Bury-Flex sells for around .82 per foot.>
>Still makes the Bury-Flex worth it.
>But when you add the shipping cost, it's no longer worth it!!!
Anyone can print a spec sheet that claims to be anything they choose, but
what really matters is that the product actually meets those
specifications. Manufacturers of "copycat" products make pretty spec
sheets that don't say much, and if they do, their products often fail to
meet the spec.
I work in the world of pro audio. Beginning about five years ago, dozens
of new brands (now hundreds) of microphones began flooding the market
from China. Some of these so-called manufacturers (really the same sort
of importer who brought you the latest product on late night cable TV)
even bought booths at trade shows. One of my friends who is heavily into
sound for his churches and wanted to do his friends a good deed signed up
as a dealer for a couple of these product lines and began importing them.
He's a REAL engineer, and has the equipment and lab to measure them, and
he sold them with his own measured response curve.
All went fairly well for the first couple of shipments -- although the
response varied several dB from one sample to another, they all were
reasonably close and sounded OK. Then something changed, and that vendor
was never able to deliver decent mics again. My friend is now buying mics
from a trusted US company. BTW -- the mics in question were $100 copies
of EU mics that sell for $1K and up.
Another example. Roughly 20 years ago, the same traders that play games
with the price of grain and stocks decided that it would be slick to do
that with copper. They invaded the market for wire and cable, buying and
selling stuff they knew nothing about, sticking their label on it,
printing skeleton data sheets, and selling it to unsuspecting
contractors. I called one of these companies and asked to speak to their
chief engineer, hoping to find out the real specs and whether this
company actually tested the cable to make sure it met those specs. I
ended up with a sales twinkie who appeared to know nothing. I asked her
where she got her EE degree. Her response-- "IBM." This company did not
make my list of approved suppliers. :)
It's great to get a REAL bargain -- for example, when you find top
quality stuff on close-out, or spare ends of cable from a high volume
user. Anyone who buys solely on price without knowing the real quality of
what he's buying is a FOOL. Period.
73,
Jim Brown K9YC
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