Blimey ordered a number of SENNHEISER headphones which arrived today from a UK company. I bought them initially because they were German!!!
I'll let the boxes do the talking..........even Australia gets a mention.
Happy St Patricks Day
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Blimey ordered a number of SENNHEISER headphones which arrived today from a UK company. I bought them initially because they were German!!!
I'll let the boxes do the talking..........even Australia gets a mention.
Happy St Patricks Day
It's really scary. What would happen if we went to war today? But then maybe it's a good thing that it makes it so difficult. Two ways of looking at it I guess.
I will not buy Chinese manufactured items if I can avoid it. The stuff is junk. Substandard steel, questionable paint, just bad news all around. I work in construction and some products like a door for instance may include a bit/saw to cut out the door knob hole and the quality is so poor it will get through the first outside layer of steel but won't be sharp enough to cut the inside layer of steel. Sawzall blades in bulk for good reason, takes six to cut through what one good blade goes through like butter.
All the rhetoric Angela Mirkel spouts about how independent Germany is, it shows even a great German company like Sennheiser have succumbed to having their great products made cheaper in China.
Don't think I would be to happy as the Sales Director of that company broadcasting to all insundry who does what on the boxes. Fritz Sennheiser must be turning in his grave!!
Lets hope they last in the hands of practitioners who know what they want from audio!!!:surrender:
There have been all sorts of quality problems with "cheap" imported metals in recent years but the person at the end of the queue/line who has actually purchased the metal may not actually see any price reduction, only quality reduction. I have personally experienced continuous welded steel tube that has been such poor quality that the simple act of clamping it in a saw vice is enough to split the weld and it even cracked with the very bare minimum of vice pressure. Other defects may include poor surface finish and variations in thickness which may cause problems depending on usage.
You also have the other side of things as well now. Made in China is starting to not always mean a crappy product. The Chinese are gaining the ability to make high end products which are comparable with most the west has to offer (at the same time most the west is losing the ability to make high end products, you stop using the skills you lose them).
Maybe in 20 years Made in China will be like Made in Japan, once it meant crap, now not so much.
China labor costs are rising. Now you are seeing made in Vietnam :sos::banghead::surrender::yikes:
Yep, the printer which I purchased about a year ago that is made by a very well known brand is manufactured in 'nam. I thought that they had produced a top quality, high tech product until about 2 weeks ago when it decided to start chewing up paper then "ingesting" it.
My two cents. Two words. Harbor Freight.
Chinese can make good stuff when it is specified as such. I have a Fiio MP3 player that uses the same DAC as the high end stuff and cost a fraction of the price. High quality product despite some issues at time with the firmware, though I don't use it much anymore as since I went back to unlimited data, streaming SiriusXM and Apple Music is easier when on the go, plus my playlists and everything auto sync now. Only example I can think of really.
Problem is companies double down on the cost savings by ordering stuff to be made cheap of cheap parts. I suspect a big issue over there is vetting of suppliers, or lack thereof... I know Chinese steel in particular makes me very nervous. I also think that while Walmart may check a run the first time it comes in, I don't know if they keep an eye on it each time the boat comes in because they don't care as long as they keep coming. Bootleg stuff is a real issue too, or remarketing of rejected products, sometimes used/reman sold as new, whatever. And if they have to make stuff with the same Chinese machine tools I've seen over here, well no wonder so much of it is out of spec junk.
Thing is though, if I buy a premium brand at a premium price, I except it to be made in their home country. And while this argument has been made before with cameras, someone like Zeiss had Yashica making their lenses because Yashica proved themselves as top notch, not because they could build it the cheapest. Those optics and cameras stood the test of time, and I will bet the current Cosina made products will as well. Now if some big name goes to China it's going to be a battle of the lowest bidder, not the best builder. I don't think China will ever be like Japan - a lot of the "Japanese crap" talk came about entirely for reasons other than the product's merits. Guitars were another example, they did make cheap department stuff to a price point, but their real products were so good and at such a great price American companies finally sued them to stop in the late 70s... then promptly licensed out their designs to the same factories. Cars were generally good too, just underpowered, undersized, and not versatile enough for the American market... but they got there. The QC and manufacturing control was always there due to guys like Deming, along with the business sense. I don't see it in Chinese products.
To be fair to China I think that China sometimes gets the blame for a poor quality product or material when in actual fact the item has come from another Far Eastern country. Another country that can have issues with quality/quality control is India but, no doubt, they are also capable of making good quality products as is China.
I don't think anything is safe from being copied, however, they still need the wherewithall, to produce stuff to the same standard.
This might open your eyes............Rolls Royce were NOT amused, and they denied they were trying to copy the car!!!!
Fake Rolls Royce Chinese copy Rolls Royce Phantom with Rolls Royce / Geely adverts - YouTube
I know that Rolls Royce guard their name and brand very jealously.
I'd like to see how it compares...take it four wheelin' and then to the rocket range.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gil Boyd
I was over there a couple of years ago and was taken round an "engineering" works, CNC machines flat out, with UK famous names on the sides and clearly auction marks still obvious on one or two, so they bought the best technology on the back of failing UK manufacturers, which you can't blame them for.
The downside for them, all the computerisation was in English, but I am sure that wasn't a challenge for a thifty software brain to sort in quick time!!
They seem to spending a lot of time on Solar products mass produced, not just your garden lights that last for a year, but bigger stuff too, and I was told the the CE mark means China Engineered.:yikes:
I remember when the first news stories started appearing (~15-18 years ago?) about the United States Army headgear being changed to a beret.
One of the smaller reports mentioned that the initial HUGE order for the berets had been placed with a Chinese company. :confused:
In my field (recording engineering), the most expensive tools we use are all built in the U.K. For years I worked on Neve mixing consoles, made in Cambridge, England. Then we added a Solid State Logic console, built in Oxford, England. I've been to that plant - they really are built there and sub-assemblies are built in an adjoining town. And finally, we've recently added a couple of excellent Calrec consoles made in Hebden Bridge England in the Pennines. These are all $250,000 and above custom, hand-built consoles. The best mics are still built in Germany and Austria and everyone knows it.
Where China enters into the fray is in three areas:
1. Component creation
2. Assembly of Western-designed products (notice that the brain trusts are still in the West)
3. Knock-offs of established products (notice that the brain trusts are still in the West)
That third category is the most interesting of the bunch. An example: My company owns a vintage Neumann U-47 tube powered mic made in Berlin in 1957 that has an exquisite sound and is worth somewhere around $10,000 amongst recording engineers who revere it. It really is a wonderful, musical mic. Last month I plunked down $399 and bought for my personal use a reverse-engineered, tube-powered knock-off mic that is made in China for an American company. It is amazing. I mean amazing. Is it as good as the U-47? No. Not quite. But it is amazingly close. As an experienced recording engineer I can make recordings with it that sound just as good as those I make with a U-47. Think about that. For 1/20th the price I can near equal the best tool available.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...03/u4715-1.jpg
People buy these things and record at home. With some study, preparation, and experience they can make great recordings. We are seeing the democratization of recording. For years it could only be done in expensive studios that cost in the range of $200 per hour in order to support the incredibly expensive collections of gear and specially treated rooms. Now musicians are recording their own music at home. Voice actors are recording their own work at home. Recording studios are fighting for their lives and artists are learning to make their own products. Fascinating.
Bob
Bob,
Yes agreed. As a musician when I'm doing nothing else, I have often been offerd the new VOX amps, of course made in China. Not the reliable valve sets but transistorised knock offs.
Whatever is said about them, they still can't get that final quality edge on this type of kit. A bit like those NO4 tins and the telescopes they tried to copy. All the measuremenst were slightly off, but they did come from Taiwan where things tend to be made better.
I tried out a pair of real Sennheiser headphones yesterday and tried them against this lot that arrived.
The ear cushions are made well, (but so are their 3 piece suites made in leather and sold as fine Italian suites), the downside IMHO you can hear a more treble sound delivery in both ears that you don't have in a real pair. Minor, but major if you like pure sounds from a good mic.
Yep. I'm a guitarist as well. I look at my guitar gear and discover that the vast majority of it is made in America, Canada, or the U.K. I haven't insisted on that, it just happened. Oh, there might be sub-assemblies made in Japan (as in the amp circuit board on a Leslie rotary amp) or China, but the majority of it is made in the West. There is cheaper stuff, but I can feel and hear the difference. My site, The Musician's Room, is HERE, by the way. It's an attempt to harmonize musicianship and recording.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gil Boyd
Bob
The UK Military trialled Bushnell sniper scopes and really liked them for quality and value OVER the S&B. A lot more to it than that of course, including the fact that while optically the S&B was better, the price meant that you could get 6+(?) Bushnells for one S&B. But when a small change was required before any deal was finalised, Bushnell couldn't comply - because the scopes were made in , you've guessed it ....... China!
Bob, thanks for posting your site. Fascinating stuff, thought 90% of it was way over my head.
I will certainly point a few friends that might understand a little more in its direction.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Bob
Many years ago when I was getting started in the welding fabrication trade the company I worked for got in some Japanese steel because? It was half as expensive. The problem was we couldn't weld the stuff. We tried different gas and wire combinations and dozens of different rods and the weld kept cracking out. The solution. Japanese welding rod that had to be special ordered. We used up that batch of steel and never ordered it again. the boss had a chunk of it framed with a couple of the rods in tribute to futility. Maybe some of the Americans here will remember the days when we said if it doesn't say made in the U.S.A. don't buy it. Rumor had it they changed the name of the Manufacturer to USA (without the periods) So it was made in USA. How many of those cheap transistor radios made in USA we went through in the late fifties and early sixties.
Because they were something new, small and light and cute. Then one day they'd just stop working...then shops sprung up to repair that sort of thing. Now those are all gone because they changed the technology again so it's too expensive to repair, just replace.Quote:
Originally Posted by TDH
I was a safety superintendent where we built a Magnetite processing plant for a Chinese consortium (Australia is good at selling itself literally) it had 16,000 tonnes of structural steel which came in sealed 40 foot containers it was bent all over the place the columns some had been butt joined & welded (pieces) with what looked like a runny nose weld, the paint we could not get an MSDS when welding it for toxic fumes so all welders had air feds on, cleats were on wrong, fishplates did not fit and they sent the top steel of the magnetic screening plant first. And this is structural steel.......................Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying10uk
The 75 Tonne pedestal crane they had on the ROM pad to change out the 70 tone cone for the primary crusher folded the boom when it did a test lift of 70 tonnes the plate steel for the boom was only 10mm instead of 25mm T-1 steel who ever passed that crane I hope they got in the sh*te thank goodness no one was injured the new cone was un-damaged I had left by that stage thank goodness as tracking it back to China would have been fun for the investigation team.