well alrighty then!:D at least we've established that i wasn't the one who started it. i really try to avoid bringing that stuff up here mainly because i know you don't like my politics. it's sort of like having a drink with John Wayne. lol. he's a hell of a nice guy but just don't mention politics. lol.

Chris, it's not going to happen. all those jobs will never return to America. IF, and it's a big IF, manufacturing does return to the US and Canada, it's all going to be automated. the path forward is new technologies like electric cars and renewables. America will always be a nation of burger flippers and hotel housekeepers until we see that. Regan told us in the 70's were were going to be a service economy and that's what has happened. servants to the uber wealthy.

Warm is doing the best any company can do imo as far as hiring Americans. unlike some who ship complete product from Asia, Warm has assemblies made in large quantities for economy of scale to their spec in highly automated factories that can bang one out in seconds compared to 3 or 4 hours of tech time hand stuffing a board. but it's the same parts. the same quality boards, resistors and capacitors and transformers. same construction techniques. the parts are shipped to the U.S for final assembly. if you add it up even a real 251 has about $400 in parts. the rest is in assembly.

is a real 251 nicer that a Warm? yes. i will say it. it's an investment grade mic. the Ck12 capsule is a thing of wonder. especially one with a brass ring. i've owned 2 Ck12 type mics in my life (a C24 and a C12a) and they were both wonderful. but who has $8 grand for a mic? from the demos i've heard and seen Warm products all do about 90% of what the originals do at about 10% of the cost.

Again, assuming, engaging, putting words in my mouth to keep politics on your agenda. I mention cheap China crap but have no interest in who you vote for. Please stop writing BS like this. You won't find one comment from me here where I've mentioned a political party. In fact I keep asking you to keep politics out of the forum. Or at least, don't assume you know anything about who I vote for.
Should I let your tongue in cheek comments go over and over? Just like you did here again...

Kurt Foster, post: 464203, member: 7836 wrote: well alrighty then!:D at least we've established that i wasn't the one who started it. i really try to avoid bringing that stuff up here mainly because i know you don't like my politics. it's sort of like having a drink with John Wayne. lol. he's a hell of a nice guy but just don't mention politics. lol.

Kurt Foster, post: 464152, member: 7836 wrote: funny, I remember it was Nixon and the Republicans who did that .... it's not "liberals and greens" who want to break the unions. it's the right wing.

———————————————-
Here is an interesting post from Dave on Cheap LCD.

dvdhawk, post: 404259, member: 36047 wrote: Sorry Kurt, I don't have any insider information on the topic. I'd share the info if I had it. I was watching this thread hoping to learn more about that myself.

Not many of my customers are interested in LDC mics, whether they're bonafide high-end studio mics, or the cheap knock-offs.

I'm just a piddly little a/v contractor in the middle of nowhere, so I can't support more than two mic lines and make the annual dealer quotas. So, I have to deal with the brands I trust most. And if I think someone else makes something better suited for your application, I'll get it through a distributor, or if necessary, pay full retail for it and not make a cent on it - (people, and the right product, over profits).

Since I deal largely with church and schools, a significant part of my business is wireless systems. So I need reasonably durable wireless mics that can take being dropped a few times, while sounding good, and rejecting feedback. It doesn't seem like too much to ask of mics in the $600 - $900 price range. But plastic crap prone to breakage, premature internal failure, and costly call-backs, are not my idea of a good time - or a good business model.

Cheap mics built to a price-point are one thing, but worse yet - all the legendary mic companies who have moved their manufacturing to China and ruined their stellar reputation, for the sake of higher margins. And that doesn't account for the items still technically "made in" their home country from what are now Chinese parts. When I saw the price of one of my AKG best sellers drop 30% while it claims it's still made in Austria - you gotta figure the parts got cheaper, in every sense of the word, somewhere along the way.

The handful of companies I've dealt with, who at the very least, have moved their low-end lines to China, claimed they had their own exclusive manufacturing facilities under the watchful eye of their own expatriate management and quality control team. - keeping them in good supply of sauerkraut and schnitzel while they kept the company standards high. The real-world results have not been very good from my experience, so I stopped dealing with my longest standing wireless mic vendor (AKG) a couple years ago. They tell me profits are up. I ask, "for how long?", and, "does that include all the defective returns?" and, "who's going to pay for my time constantly making service-calls cleaning up your messes?" Even if it's under-warranty I lose credibility with the customer, and valuable time. And the trend is snowballing, as I was politely bitching about in audiokid's [[url=http://[/URL]="http://recording.or…"]"Off Shore Manufacturing..."[/]="http://recording.or…"]"Off Shore Manufacturing..."[/] thread a few months ago, more and more products are being built elsewhere every year.

It stinks that those jobs went to a largely exploited workforce, but good luck finding a company that doesn't build something in China these days.

I believe even our beloved SM57 / SM58s are made south of the border in Mexico, but at least they still perform as well as ever. I can't testify to the rest of the Shure line, because I don't have anything else within easy reach to read the "Made In" tag at the moment.

I only know of one mic company that seems to build virtually everything 'stateside' - (Audix) so I've been giving them as much of my business as I can.

And there are companies building products in China successfully that are worth owning (and selling), so it CAN be done.

To wit: Add Toft to the list of PMI holdings.

[ Not any help at all to the topic, I know, but at least I got that off my chest ]

Kurt Foster, post: 464203, member: 7836 wrote: is a real 251 nicer that a Warm? yes. i will say it. it's an investment grade mic. the Ck12 capsule is a thing of wonder. especially one with a brass ring. i've owned 2 Ck12 type mics in my life (a C24 and a C12a) and they were both wonderful. but who has $8 grand for a mic? from the demos i've heard and seen Warm products all do about 90% of what the originals do at about 10% of the cost.

I wonder how much a CK12 capsule cost? Here is a really interesting thread on the 251 etc.
http://www.foxaudioresearch.ca/TheM251.htm

$260.00 https://www.fronten…

here's how it went;

Kurt Foster said: ↑
don't blame the Chinese. it's all Western money that's invested in China.
audiokid said: ↑
I stopped wondering after I started seeing all our jobs being sent offshore where Greedy American companies got China to do it from the back door where they could break every rule. Now we can hardly afford to but Chinese lol
That's what I just said and say it over and over. Greedy Americans that used China to build NA products. When it comes to China selling us back the stuff Americans send to them, I have nothing against China. They are smart at business.

You are lucky you own your own home and shop. You are one of the lucky ones that got started before it all went off shore.

Anyway, that still doesn't make cheap sound any better. It simply makes cheap good enough for most of us who don't need anything better.
IMO the best money spent is acoustic treatment, computer, great interface and conversion with stellar preamps and some good quality mics needed for whatever you record. High quality ADDA, pre-amps and good mics are essential to my ears. end quote.

this is all very political and is the line Republican conservatives spout incessantly. i am happy NOT to whip the horse but when it's brought to the table should i just not say anything out of some kind of political correctness? the bottom line is American manufacturing was moved offshore to break the labor unions. you don't like unions but you say you hate China labor. the two are inextricably connected.

you can call me lucky that i "got started before it all went off shore." but the truth is my families wealth was built because of labor unions. my Dad worked as an auto worker and was protected by the UAW who secured a living wage, pension and health care for our family. my Mom died of cancer in a long drawn out decline that would have bankrupted any working family without insurance. so i hope you understand my passion for labor.

China isn't the problem. the problem is our nations politics is dominated by the wealth that 3 families wield and those families care nothing for the health and welfare of the general populace. they are bent to break any labor organizing. they see us as numbers on a chart. if 75,000 die from the virus, so be it. if there's one thing this pandemic is bringing to light it's that big business is nothing without labor. labor can fend for its self but big business need the workers to make a profit. they are not "creating jobs" they are exploiting labor for profits.

i suggest we leave the politics out of it. where something is manufactured is moot now. nothing WE say will ever change it. China and Mexico are here to stay and any talk of it is a smoke screen the right uses to divide working class people. divide and conquer. our argument here is a perfect example.

Kurt Foster, post: 464210, member: 7836 wrote: $260.00 https://www.frontendaudio.com/peluso-cek-12-microphone-capsule/

Thanks for the link. Would this be the same capsule Warm Audio, Bock, Mojave and others would use?

that's a Peluso capsule. i think it's made in the US. ???? (anyone?)
it looks like the ones in WARM s' mics are s online for $160 .

Kurt Foster, post: 464212, member: 7836 wrote: that's a Peluso capsule. i think it's made in the US. ???? (anyone?)
it looks like the ones in WARM s' mics are s online for $160 .

The RK12 is another re-creation of the classic C12 capsule.
https://microphone-…

Thing is, yes the capsule is very important, but most circuits include parts that will change/adjust the EQ curve to fit the build and intent.
So you can't judge a mic only by it's capsule..

For example changing the capsule on a MXL 990 for an RK 47 made it usable and not hyped like the original one..
But there is a kit to change the circuit and the RK47 would be way too dark with it so it's best to use the RK67 or RK12 instead..
I wish I could put my T12 against a C12 one day.. I bet it sounds different but nonetheless good. ;)

pcrecord, post: 464213, member: 46460 wrote: Thing is, yes the capsule is very important, but most circuits include parts that will change/adjust the EQ curve to fit the build and intent.
So you can't judge a mic only by it's capsule.

yes. parts ain't parts. some are better, some not.

i think it's fair to say Chris is correct to say real 251 / 87 / C12's are the pinnacle and i don't expect any $500 - $800 clones to measure up to them.

i think it's also fair to say that WARM is doing clones better than any one else currently and they really deliver an awful lot of what an original has for a very low cost in a world where most recording has become privately funded endeavors intended for release on YouTube.

the traditional recording studio model was based on an industry (AM radio) that created a huge demand for new records on an ongoing basis. it was almost like having a printing press to print money. Studios could ask what ever they wanted to record jingles, recording artists and what ever. most studio equipment was hand built and very expensive. those days are gone. that demand is no longer there. most people record for sh*ts and giggles now days and who knows? it actually might be better for arts sake in the long run. so it seems to be logical that the tools we will use will be be sh*ts and giggles money and not so serious. only a very few can afford or justify 8k for one mic.

the one thing i am absolutely convinced of is even the cheapest of the tools offered now days can yield a good representation of a decent performance. take https://recording.org/threads/pines-of-caroline.64933/ recently posted. recorded with a Zoom ...

Kurt Foster, post: 464132, member: 7836 wrote: i have wondered for years why Rode mics aren't that popular or actually in use in more pro studios? i mean major pro rooms like Blackbird.

i have noticed this for quite some time and coupled with my own very limited experience with them i have always assumed it was because they just don't sound that great.

It's just that they're not "Made In The USA". They should have stuck a Telefunken USA label on those, I suppose...

The internets are full of people dissing Rode because their very first mics had Chinese capsules. The same people didn't even notice Rode did a ton of research and built their own factory to do better.

the videos i've seen of Warm internals don't look sloppy to me but what do i know? comparisons i'v watched seemed to be fair and the demos made by recordists like '">Mitch Gallagher and '">Sylvia Massey sound pretty good.

Admittedly, what I've seen from their electronics looks very tidy. That's why I was very surprised when I saw that mic. It looked like "handbuilt", but that's not really what makes a great mic. It just makes a great marketing line...

admittedly, i'm not tech savvy but i see quality transformers, caps and resistors and through hole construction. assemblies and capsules are manufactured in China to WARM specs but they are assembled and tweaked in the U.S. i've tried to post an image of the insides of the WA-12 but for some reason i get an error message. https://warmaudio.c… it doesn't look like junk to me.

"Assembled and tweaked" is usually just a way of avoiding the "Made in China" label.

WARM mics aren't $3000 but more like $500 for solid state types to $1500 for the top of the line Tube mics .

i don't understand the resistance to what seems to me to be a great line of audio products.

maybe Warm is making a mistake not supplying more products for review at no charge?

Maybe Warm Audio wasn't the best of examples. Maybe Telefunken USA is a better one. While they might supply some great mics, at exorbitant prices, there's NO research. They just buy what comes out of a presumably Chinese capsule factory.

I'd never buy that stuff if you can get a Schoeps, Shure, Neumann, DPA or other product from a genuine manufacturer. One that has knowledge, a research dept. and makes it's own capsules.

Hasn't Harman destroyed enough brands and enough knowledge by now?

@9 minutes the comparison starts. Austrain audio vs AKG 414 vs Neumann tlm 103. If nothing else it shows how significant mic choice is. I like that he demos different pres and conversion.

a 103 and a 414 are totally different mics. 414 is multi pattern and the 103 is not. i wouldn't go so far to say one is any better. different animals.

$260.00 https://www.fronten…

That's probably a Chinese capsule. 797 Audio, IIRC. 50-60$ at other resellers...

These aren't easy to order from 797 Audio if you only want one or two. But a five times markup is a bit steep, even if you take QC and service into account. Price if you buy a hundred from 797 Audio: around 25$ a piece.

There are people who really make/repair their own capsules. Like that Chinese guy, living in Australia. Like Siegfried Thiersch, in Germany. Or Tim Campbell...

Thiersch charges 120 to 150 € for reskinning a genuine Neumann capsule and around 250 € for a new handmade capsule. That's way more work than opening a box of Chinese capsules and putting one of those in a bag and sending it to a customer...

Tim Campbell makes an AKG C12 replacement capsule. Not cheap, around 350 €, but according to people who own a genuine C12 from AKG and had to replace the capsule, the only one that comes very, very close to the original. Of course, the C12 is a difficult beast to tame. Even AKG couldn't make those, when they still existed. Some of the original materials turned into unobtanium and some of the processes were no longer economically viable.
http://www.timcampb…

If these prices still seem high, go hunting around Tao Bao, or AliBaba. You might come across some seller who offers these capsules at basement bargain prices. Of course, expect to buy a number of them before you find the best ones.

Kurt Foster, post: 464259, member: 7836 wrote: a 103 and a 414 are totally different mics. 414 is multi pattern and the 103 is not. i wouldn't go so far to say one is any better. different animals.

Fair point. I thought the 818 sounded the best of the bunch personally.

cyrano, post: 464260, member: 51139 wrote: There are people who really make/repair their own capsules. Like that Chinese guy, living in Australia. Like Siegfried Thiersch, in Germany. Or Tim Campbell...

Thiersch charges 120 to 150 € for reskinning a genuine Neumann capsule and around 250 € for a new handmade capsule. That's way more work than opening a box of Chinese capsules and putting one of those in a bag and sending it to a customer...

Tim Campbell makes an AKG C12 replacement capsule. Not cheap, around 350 €, but according to people who own a genuine C12 from AKG and had to replace the capsule, the only one that comes very, very close to the original. Of course, the C12 is a difficult beast to tame. Even AKG couldn't make those, when they still existed. Some of the original materials turned into unobtanium and some of the processes were no longer economically viable.

that doesn't seem so unreasonable.

cyrano, post: 464256, member: 51139 wrote: The internets are full of people dissing Rode because their very first mics had Chinese capsules. The same people didn't even notice Rode did a ton of research and built their own factory to do better.

i can't even remember which RODE i tried ... it was the LD cardioid one. i can't say it was as bad as a lot of Chinese / Asian mics. it wasn't bright or peaky sounding. actually it sounded FLAT and i don't mean like flat frequency response, just flat. like a tire. not exciting. boring. meeh! it just didn't do anything for me. i don't buy it's because of the first mics being N/G ... rather that they just have never made a stand out mic.

Kurt Foster, post: 464270, member: 7836 wrote: i can't even remember which RODE i tried ... it was the LD cardioid one. i can't say it was as bad as a lot of Chinese / Asian mics. it wasn't bright or peaky sounding. actually it sounded FLAT and i don't mean like flat frequency response, just flat. like a tire. not exciting. boring. meeh! it just didn't do anything for me. i don't buy it's because of the first mics being N/G ... rather that they just have never made a stand out mic.

How many years ago, Kurt?

probably like 2005 .... in 2020 i still don't see them in use in use in pro rooms like Blackbird or Sunset. imo a product aimed at the hobby studio.

Kurt Foster, post: 464274, member: 7836 wrote: probably like 2005 .... in 2020 i still don't see them in use in use in pro rooms like Blackbird or Sunset. imo a product aimed at the hobby studio.

RODE used to offshore and had junk as you described, I too tried an NT which was a clone of the U87 . It sounded like crap.
Then about a decade they built a cutting edge factory that is, from what I’m told, world class. The K2 is an excellent mic for under a grand.which I would suspect is just as nice as the rest in that price range. I’ve owned at least 4 of them and they sounded nothing like the old RODE.
Many pro studio don’t know much about RODE. Classic example of trying to shed a bad reputation that likely will never leave them

audiokid, post: 464279, member: 1 wrote: Many pro studio don’t know much about RODE Classic example of trying to shed a bad reputation that likely will never leave them

if you build it, they will come. if a company is innovative and builds something that shakes things up, people will notice.

it's not like Rode hasn't tried. thEe NT 2000 has all the right features. it just doesn't seem to have caught on. question is why? price? marketing? sound? Rode's web site looks like they want to cater to the prosumer market

Kurt Foster, post: 464274, member: 7836 wrote: probably like 2005 .... in 2020 i still don't see them in use in use in pro rooms like Blackbird or Sunset. imo a product aimed at the hobby studio.

audiokid, post: 464279, member: 1 wrote: RODE used to offshore and had junk as you described, I too tried an NT which was a clone of the U87 . It sounded like crap.
Then about a decade they built a cutting edge factory that is, from what I’m told, world class. The K2 is an excellent mic for under a grand.which I would suspect is just as nice as the rest in that price range. I’ve owned at least 4 of them and they sounded nothing like the old RODE.
Many pro studio don’t know much about RODE. Classic example of trying to shed a bad reputation that likely will never leave them

Rode is quite popular in non-pop/rock genres. Like opera and other classical music.

The very first Rode NT1' electronics were designed by Jim Williams. Better than the U87. Keep in mind that the U87 used transistors from the sixties. Only the very first NT1 series came with a Chinese capsule. It's certainly not a bad mic at all, but it has a presence peak, like all LDCs. Easy enough to EQ out. The NT1a corrected that a bit and had a capsule made by Rode. Then Rod came out again with an NT1, adding to the confusion.

People always forget that the preamp has tremendous impact on the way a mic sounds. And the first Rode NT1 is one of the prime examples. Connected to my RME FF400, it almost sounds harsh, clinical, unforgiving. Connected to an old Tascam, it's almost mellow. That Tascam is a strange beast, fed with +/- 24V in stead of the usual +/- 18 V. It has tremendous headroom. No opamps, all discrete. The NT1 has a lot of output and doesn"t mate too well with a preamp that doesn't have a lot of headroom. Especially when driven hard, like with metal or hardrock. I do love it with "angelic voices". Lots of "air", because of the bump in the chart.

IMHO there are no bad mics. You just need to find the right source. I seem to prefer SDC omni over LDC cardio. I think that is because omni usually has a much flatter off-axis response.

And, after all is said and done, it's the performance that matters, followed by the room. No mic will make a bad performance or a bad room sound good. No matter what the slutz might tell you...

what model of Tascam?

MX4. Hardly known, except in broadcast...

cyrano, post: 464283, member: 51139 wrote: MX4. Hardly known, except in broadcast...

thanks!

cyrano, post: 464281, member: 51139 wrote: Rode is quite popular in non-pop/rock genres. Like opera and other classical music.

Interesting. I know they are also popular in the hip hop world too.

This is a becoming a nice discussion !! :)

I'm not sure that all parts coming from china are bad..
Many makers order them with high specs and do intensive quality control when they get them..
The I'm better than you game is fierce in this industry and many highend brand are forced to go cheaper or offer new affordable products to appeal to home studios.
Big names may suffer overtime because of this.. But what I always wonder is what is the real cost of these high price units..
How much is it the name price and how much is the parts and design price.
I mean the great great LA2A, when sold at 2.5k, is the making cost 2k or 1k and they just exagerate the price for no reason than making more money..
It lets you think that if they just boost the price, clones may as well be as good with similar parts and designs.. just more affordable..
The corporate profit sickness is affecting every companies... and customers..

I owned 6 UA LA2A and they were all slightly different but all what I would consider the ultimate in a vocal chain. That being said, opened up they look like they should only cost hundreds, not thousands. I replaced a few tubes in two units for stereo matching and the tubes cost me $400.

pcrecord, post: 464367, member: 46460 wrote: I mean the great great LA2A, when sold at 2.5k, is the making cost 2k or 1k and they just exagerate the price for no reason than making more money..

i figure a 50% mark up for the manufacturer and then another 25% for the retailer and i don't think either are unreasonable. some companies have a small workforces and pretty much do everything by hand. they make quality products for discerning customers who can afford an investment in a quality product. good on them. they should be supported.

some manufactures simply exploit Asia's highly automated facilities and CHEAP LABOR. they don't care about audio. they are only interested in any value added process where they can essentially print money. the real bottom feeders repackage or worse just rebadge existing products and advertise different feature sets to stand out in the crowd.

in a new twist, a handful have figured out that they can specify and source assemblies from Asia to hold down costs and then assemble them stateside in their own facilities for the best of both worlds. QC can be better maintained while offering lower cost and increased value to the end user. i think that is where it's all headed.

the bottom will remain the bottom, the middle markets are expanding at the expense of the boutique high end manufacturers. i think there will always be a demand for very high end products but not as much in the home studio and hobby end of it. where a large expenditure can be justified / recouped, vintage and big ticket will continue to prevail but for the average consumer who is not necessarily earning a living at audio, the middle of the road products are quite appealing.

Something like an LA2a or pultec i think has a significant price for namesake, and reputation, relative to the parts and assembly.

When you get into converters or new designs, we have to account for R and D. So while it might use a fairly low cost dsp chip, integrating it can take alot of time and effort.

Patent and licensing issues can also make clones more expensive, or force design compromise. I think heritage audio or someone like that got sued by neve for using the same knobs.

Whats interesting to me is that it seems your in the same price range as "the real thing" when talking clones of equal quality (by general consensus). A pultec and the Cartec, and Tube Tech versions are all considered equal quality, and similar if not a direct replacement. They are all in the same price range. Sure smaller volume production means higher costs, but i wonder if they are able to charge a premium just because they are based on a pultec. It seems to me if they could sell them significantly cheaper, they would. I actually dont think its a cash grab. A Brent Avril, isn't much cheaper than a neve.

Someone with skills and patients, could bypass the retail, and corperate costs, and i would estimate build a unit for about 30%.

One thing i enjoy about SOS reveiws is they dig into the ultra technical stuff often with hardware. They will note that BAE omits a gain stage compared to neve, or stuff that someone like me would never know.

kmetal, post: 464370, member: 37533 wrote: Someone with skills and patients, could bypass the retail, and corperate costs, and i would estimate build a unit for about 30%.

i think you are spot on. about 70 to 80 % of the price goes to overhead, cost of construction and retailing. i imagine there's a huge amount of satisfaction in using something you built with your own hands.

Off shore manufacturing may look close enough but slight alterations can make something designed great not so great, which is why some products can and should cost more than others. It takes time and smarts to figure out detail too. I recall Boswell mentioning a design of his wrongfully altered to save costs by the manufacturer that was just enough of change his design.

We all want a good deal but that shouldn't justify us thinking its right to support products that are ripped off. How would we feel if a song of ours was ripped off just enough. I think intellectual property is worth as much as the designer wants or deserves and sleazy marketing who take advantage of that should be shunned or prosecuted. Long live those who are inventors of greatness. Some people spend a lifetime making one thing that may only cost pennies. What is that worth?
Being said, I do think there is a lot of precision off-shore manufacturing.

just found this so i edited my post of 8:56.

from SOS:" Mojave Audio, the brainchild of David Royer, have managed in just a few years to create quite a buzz for their line of reasonably priced capacitor mics. Royer, known for his ribbon-mic designs, has applied his craft to an assortment of USA-designed, assembled-in-China microphones, including the subject of this review, the Mojave MA301 FET. The mic's capsule employs a three-micron-thick, gold-sputtered diaphragm approximately one inch across, and is modelled after the K67 capsule found in Neumann's classic U67 tube mic. Being a solid-state design, however, the mic as a whole is perhaps closer to the U87."

It will be cool if or when they and others get products assembled here. That would or could put people that are okay making an average wage back to work here again, let alone, slow down intellectual property from being ripped off. one day a hero, next day a zero.

I know a few microphone manufacturers who have had to go to China many times to keep an eye on quality control, it’s been a long process getting it done to their standards. If you keep an eye on them.... I guess it’s worth their trouble.

audiokid, post: 464374, member: 1 wrote: It will be cool if or when they and others get products assembled here. That would or could put people that are okay making an average wage back to work here again, let alone, slow down intellectual property from being ripped off. one day a hero, next day a zero.

i doubt that's ever going to happen. any new manufacturing being built anywhere in the world is going to be automated. people are obsolete.

Kurt Foster, post: 464375, member: 7836 wrote: i doubt that's ever going to happen. any new manufacturing being built anywhere in the world is going to be automated. people are obsolete.

Mass Automation and AI is indeed growing. What a world eh.
The town I just left used to have hundreds of fallers supporting the timber industry there. All those fallers bought homes, local shopping and even liked recording music.
Then Finning Cat made machines that cost hundreds of thousands to buy, that cut more than all the men put together. The steel was made in China (we shut down mining here :sneaky:o_O) and the wood was sold to them as well. Then we saw the town slowly die but the unemployed were happy to get cheap furniture from China. I think most of those workers are now too broke to buy cheap furniture. But, they can still sell their homes to who made it all possible lol.
I guess it wasn’t such a good deal after all, so they say. But it was good while it lasted.
I’ve heard the economy is great (or was) in China. They love high end gear.

audiokid, post: 464372, member: 1 wrote: Off shore manufacturing may look close enough but slight alterations can make something designed great not so great, which is why some products can and should cost more than others. It takes time and smarts to figure out detail too. I recall Boswell mentioning a design of his wrongfully altered to save costs by the manufacturer that was just enough of change his design.

That was a rather different situation, where the design, prototypes and pre-production review models were done in Europe, while main production was sent East. I was later told the main production was apparently preceded by a cost-review process, which is where the corner-cutting was carried out. It still makes me angry to think about it, particularly the reviewers getting models that performed substantially better than the production units.

In the case of the microphone parts, I don't have any direct knowledge of this type of behaviour. However, I heard that at least one European manufacturer was offered a range of ready-built capsules at different (ridiculously low) prices to try, and they had to choose the one or ones that they liked best at the amount they were willing to spend. That's the way it is these days.

I remember an interview with an amp builder, Mesa Boogie i believe, who said in the early days amp builders would use what was available in the shop, if they ran out of parts. So different xformers and capacitors, ect would be interchanged. He was specifically talking about fender, where he cut his teeth, and based his mesa designs off of.

I know this is a bit different than what we are talking about, but relavant. I think it would be a "big deal" today and ruinous for a company if they did that. The forums would run wild!

Hi. I’m necro-posting on this old thread, because it was a fascinating read, my very first post!,
also because I originally wondered if some of the components in this version of an Apex 460 were good enough to keep.
Couple of things came up in the discussion, ok, a lot, but not all of it needs a comment.  
The transformer in a Warm Audio tube mic is made by 3U in Aus, you can order one, they’re inexpensive. I’ve forgotten the capsule manufacturer but it’s available too. 
You choose a transformer and capsule, and fill in the dots. 
A clone pcb is available cheaply.
Look on GroupDIY. PSU pcb too.
PSU can be easily upgraded as is, the zeners are the obvious fault. 

On a similar budget, 
Rode K2’s are good. The NTV with the Black gates and Jensen is a good ‘classic’ sound, with the right tube/valve, with or without a new capsule. 
For all the talk about inexpensive mic’s not equaling the greats, you can make/have one made, buy the AKG capsule the original manufacturer in this case recommends ( the 414’s), or a boutique one.
The wonder of the internet is that it’s very possible to make a version of a classic Tekefunken or Neumann or AKG tube mic. 
You can roll your sleeves up, watch some videos, and make one.

Other points from the ( two year old!) discussion…
I think the Sebatron axis200vu is a perfectly usable professional grade  Pre-amp, if I’m wrong then it’s because I’ve not had one in a perfectly treated room, but I’m pretty sure it’s fine. The Rode NT5 is found on many professional classical recordings, as noted.
The original Austrian tube mic’s are beautiful, only they are not impossibly difficult to copy or compete with, given a $1000 u.s.d and due diligence.
Sony made a good and original one, that Sinatra and Dylan had no problem with. 
I’ve previously committed to buying a Ben Sneesby, I just started wondering which model I really wanted, and then I lost a small fortune messing about with boats. 
I suspect a brand new mic of that caliber, with its capsule made to original spec, would compare very favourably with most originals.  
It is, however, possible to buy the mic the o.p asked about/Apex 460 type, and go from there building an entirely professional microphone as time and $ allow.
It may be the most detailed mod platform in the history of such things. 

It can certainly compete with or better a Warm Audio. As you can buy the very same parts, or better, as and when budget allows. Is it worth your time? Only you can know. 
 Good recording to all and thankyou for the membership! G