We all know about counterfeit guitars in the markets out there. The infamous “Chibsons” for example. When it comes to guitars, you really need to know what you’re buying and understanding the tell-tale signs identifying it’s a fake or knock off. With guitars, you can be talking about serious money as you can imagine. But are you aware pedals are now being counterfeited?
What are we talking about exactly. I wanted to clarify this first. I’m not talking about clones or knock-offs. Many Chinese companies are making pedals that are knock-offs to the original at very cheap prices. This is NOT what I’m talking about. Those are ripping off the guts, and marketing them as a “new” product under a different brand name. What we’re focusing on is a cheap duplicate of the original, including the brand name, etc.
I remember a couple of years ago, I started seeing the Paul Cochrane Timmy and the Fulltone OCD on Chinese sites for crazy low prices. This was the first time seeing this shift to counterfeit pedals for me. Since then, the offerings have spread to other brands and models.
Johnny from Alchemy Audio just put a video together to talk about this and provides some examples:
Their examples of the EP Booster and the Shure SM57 are great, but unfortunately, the majority of us will be making these purchases online. We’ll really only be able to tell if it’s fake after it’s arrived and in hand. So if you’re able to purchase via Craiglist or in a guitar store, take note of the weights. But if you’re online, I think the adage “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t” really applies. Also, pay note to the origin of the product. If it’s coming overseas, you should be wary immediately.
Let me know what you think by commenting below!
-
6 years ago
As Matt says, how does the knock-off sound compared to the genuine article? Most people completely get why we don’t want to do business with counterfeiters, but there are probably people out there who don’t care that it’s not genuine, they just want the cheap price. The video doesn’t address how the knock-off sounds, build quality, etc.
ReplyCancel -
6 years ago
A few things: one, the counterfeits are all over Ebay, and oftentimes, the real sellers ( I’ve spoken with Cusack,Earthquaker, Fulltone and others) can’t stop it because China doesn’t offer enough protections, and quite often, the sellers of the Counterfeits just create hundreds of user profiles on Ebay. It becomes a game of “whack a mole’ – so, caveat emptor. The thing that I’d really like to get across though is why you don’t want one. Let’s say you have no ethical qualms about buying a fake.Let’s say that you just want to “try out” a pedal, so you figure you’ll buy a fake, to see if you like the sound a given pedal produces. You still don’t want one, for two big reasons- 1. a thief is a thief- if they’re willing to rip off the maker, they’ll rip you off. non- functioning, and never delivered pedals abound in this market. 2. the side effect of using cheap components, and bad wiring is that they really don’t sound the same. As an example from the more legitimate side of this: I dig the OCD, but I don’t dig the particular mid hump it produces, which is why I use a Mooer Hustle drive, instead. The lower grade components produce a somewhat thinner drive sound, effectively moving the mid hump up a bit, to almost treble boost territory. So, while it’s close, it’s not exact enough to say that it’s the same sound as an OCD. An even cheaper “counterfeit’ would be even less sonically similar. So, I’d steer clear. So, to avoid them, I’d add a few things: a. 90% of the time, the backs of a counterfeit will be blank b. the seller will have a 0% seller rating, and will be named a nearly random set of letters and numbers. c. Communication, there is none. If you try to contact the seller, you’ll get either no reply or an extremely garbled reply. Hope that helps!
ReplyCancel
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
