Beware ic buyers!

icehockeyboy

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Aug 14, 2005
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Craig
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Having agreed to buy Madders Nordost Blue Heaven ic's we agreed a price, i paid, and sat back eagerly awaiting the goods.

Upon openeing them, i was immediately dubious of their authenticity, no brand markings, and one of the sheaths covering an xlr plug was skew wiff.

Some detective work later, i discovered they were not " factory made" and it appears that Madders was sold them as genuine ones, as indeed i thought they would be They were made using nordost cable ok.................speaker cable!

So it would appear that we have both been misled, and i would warn you to ask the seller to describe any that you may be purchasing.

Madders agreed a partial refund, thanks for that Steve,but, i would have preferred the real thing, BEWARE BOYS!

 
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Mr Ed

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Feb 1, 2006
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I don't know about Nordost, but I am aware that there is an operation counterfeiting Siltech interconnects somewhere in China. If they can copy Siltech, then they can copy other manufacturers.

There was a spate of eBay auctions for some of the Siltech Signature range cables with unrealistic starting prices recently. Presumably as people realise that they have been had, these will reappear on eBay...

Siltech have recently introduced some cosmetic changes to try to thwart the counterfeiters. Golden rule - if you don't trust the provenance, don't buy it!

Ed.

 

Emma Royd

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And as I understand there were some counterfeitVDH The1st Ultimate knocking about.

 

meninblack

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Jul 20, 2005
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I would imagine those carbon VdH ones would be difficult to counterfeit convincingly, so the fakes are probably very different to the originals.

Standard metal ones would be a piece of piss. There are not that many types of metal conductor available, or of insulating polymer. Both are commodity items, easily available.

Copying the design is simply a matter of having the right equipment, which a cable manufacturer would have anyway.

Lets face it, a lot of cable "manufacturers" don't carry out the primary extrusion anyway, and maybe not even the lay-up. They just cut to length, terminate and put some nice printed bits of heat-shrink on.

So don't be too dismissive of "fake" cables - they might be exactly the same as the originals!
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kennyk

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Aug 8, 2005
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the worrying thing about counterfeits is that vdHouter cable jacket is printed with vdH's information on it, and anyone who's seen Nordost will realise that it's topography is unique.

it was only a matter of time before somebody started bootlegging expensive interconnects.

 

SSM

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Jul 20, 2005
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An anecdote.

Many years ago a mate bought a run of Audioquest Type 4 speaker cable from a carpark sale.
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This cable was highly reviewed in its time and thus he bought it blind.

I was using it in my own system too. When I got over to hear his, I thought the resultant sound from his particular run of Audioquest was so uncharacteristic - shrill treble and a muddled midband. His Audioquest cable looked just like mine, colour, diameter et al. However, upon examining the printed wording on the shealth, the 'q' in the Audioquestwas different. It had a subtle curve to the left - which read as :Audioguest.

To say my mate was irate was an understatement.
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Kudos to the Audioguest manufacturers. They are a lot more sneaky than Kingwood (for Kenwood).
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A

adam

Guest
Mr Cat wrote:

Emma Royd wrote:
And as I understand there were some counterfeitVDH The1st Ultimate knocking about.
yeah, this guy -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/van-den-Hul-M-C-D102III-Hybrid-Interconnect_W0QQitemZ260033974060QQihZ016QQcategoryZ116850QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

sells home made cables (real VDH cable but with cheap connectors) - back in january...however, the cable doesn't really sound bad, but when I questioned him about it he claimed that he bought them in bulk - but his advert at the time implied that they were from his personal system but if you look at his feedback - he has sole loads! and indeed the actual connectors themselves - they're from maplins!

edit - compare the connectors to that iof the image in this ad...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VAN-DEN-HUL-D-102-III-HYBRID-INTERCONNECT-0-8-M_W0QQitemZ160030741866QQihZ006QQcategoryZ116850QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I don't know about the UK,but here you can buy VDH of the reel,its costs peanuts,you get RCA plugs and terminate,my sets were about 15GBP.

 
E

earl of sodbury

Guest
These issues are further confused when OEM manufacturers slipbranded products out of the back door - they are the "real" thing, but you have no come-back if theyare faulty...

 

icehockeyboy

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Aug 14, 2005
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supercapman wrote:

Nordost cables are nearly impossible to re-terminate without the proper tool as the surface of the conductors can be damaged.
Thats what the Nordost man told me too, and Sony, i agree with you on the Eichmann Nordosts too!

 

madders

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May 21, 2006
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Steve
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Hi Guys,

Sorry, only just seen this thread.

For the record I did not knowingly mislead in my FS thread. Once it was brought to my attention I offered a partial refund - an amount agreed as acceptable between myself and Icehockeyboy - and under the guidance of the moderator. I do not want anyone to get the wrong idea that I am trying to sell "dodgy" kit.

I bought the cables from a guy off AVForums, can't find the original thread and can't remember his name, but I had no reason to doubt him as I bought an EAD Amp, DVD Player and Processor from him at the same time and everything worked flawlessly. He had just upgraded to a Meridian 800 Series system so it looked to me like money wasn't an issue therefore I assumed the cables were genuine.

 

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