Ebay Warning: Chinese 'Fake' Cables

danza

danza

danza

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There has been a fairly recent influx of cable, mid to high end, for sale on eBay from sellers in China. This seemed dubious to me, just, well, because we know that one thing China does very well is copy/fake stuff like earphones, toothbrush heads, razor blades, ipods, memory cards etc..

Anyway, I bought the following cable:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270493342822&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I'm not one usually 'suckered' in to buying this kind of thing, but at £22 for 'pure silver' cables, I thought I'd give it a shot (I'm not a complete cable skeptic, just have a line drawn at about £20 for phono leads, whether used, home made or new off-the-shelf). You will notice that the cable auction mentions the words 'pure silver'. I can assure you that there is nothing pure silver about these interconnects whatsoever.

The picture below shows the cable as I received it:

Cable01FF.jpg


The next picture shows the phono plug casing unscrewed, and a load of hot melt glue plastered over the inside of body of the plug. Hiding something? The hot melt glue seems to be acting as the anchor for the plug to the cable. Quality.

Cable02FF.jpg


After hacking at the glue for a couple of minutes, I exposed the conductors. After reasonably carefully paring away the rather hard red insulation material, I found that the cable was not silver at all. Not even plated, but plain copper. There is a single center conductor and a braided screen which is connected to ground.

The picture below shows the copper conductor:

Cable03FF.jpg


The black overbraid is held on the ends of the cable with what appears to be green insulation tape.

What the above has to do with fake cables apart from the fact there is no pure silver (apart from possibly the plug plating), is that there is a manufacturer's branding on the cable itself. I couldn't get a good enough picture to show, but on the maroon outer jacket is printed 'Van Den HUL M. C. D 102 MK III Hybrid >Halogen free<', in gold writing.

This is clearly wrong, as there is no carbon conducting material in the cable at all (as there would be in the genuine cable), and the outer jacket is the wrong colour (maroon vs. mustard yellow of the genuine cable).

DON'T buy 'hifi' cables from China!

£22 down the pan!
 
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Hotwired said:
Question is, was the sound quality affected?
Click to expand...

I conveniently have a CD player with twin RCA analogue outputs, so can easily do a back to back blindish comparison with the cable i usually use (but not at the moment as the wife is sleeping!).
 
the old saying of....

a fool and his money are easily parted

come to mind..

What exactly did you expect to receive?

The leads look cheap, the ebay ad looks as bad as the leads..
 
Construction doesn't seem that bad. The plugs don't have the usual "crimp" cable anchor so the glue has been used as an alternative which might even be preferable (no movement of the cable termination) and the braiding needs something at the end to stop it unraveling, insulation tape is as applicable as anything (though I'd use heatshrink tubing myself).

However, the advert states pure silver which it isn't so you were mis-sold. A perfectly good performance cable anyhow I'd guess.
 
Its not completely unusual for RCA and similiar connectors to have glue like that inside to minimise movement on the cable termination as above. Looks like your average quality cabling just being mis-sold as a higher priced item which its not.
 
so many fakes on eBay its untrue. most from china as well. I bought what was advertised as a genuine Nintendo wii controller. As soon as I got it it was clearly a fake, cheap plastics and poorly lined up printing. I complained to eBay and got a full refund though. Do the same and dont forgot to leave your feedback.
 
You realise that it's probably not much different to most expensive cables in the way it's constructed don't you? Pricey cables are a con at all times.

Neutrik connectors, Van Damme cable – makes no difference to sound quality it just coils nicely and the connectors don't fall apart. Anything above that is just a waste.
 
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Fake.. Yeah... but the construction did look pretty good. The glue is definatly not a bad thing, it adds a really decent barrier against air getting to the copper and solder joint, which can prevent the copper(or silver) oxidising.

But yeah, if your paying for a silver cable, then your obviously going to want a silver cable. Even at £22 it was probably quite acceptable as a cable, it certainly appears to have a fairly reasonable thickness of copper in the core cable, and braided screens are desirable for RCA cables which are not balance anyway.

Probably sounded as good as any other £20~ cable.
 
I made some myself last year about 4 1m lenghts - was a right pain

cost more in p[arts than I expected

and burt myself several times with soldering iron

won't do it again
 
I too made some myself, a few months back. About £7 all together for 3 pairs, cut them to the lengths I needed (40, 50 and 60cm IIRC), took an hour or two to assemble them, no burns! Got to know what parts to use as some are indeed terrible to work with. Shame the plugs don't 'match' but it's only the casing which is different.



:)
 
Dr.EM said:
I too made some myself, a few months back. About £7 all together for 3 pairs, cut them to the lengths I needed (40, 50 and 60cm IIRC), took an hour or two to assemble them, no burns! Got to know what parts to use as some are indeed terrible to work with. Shame the plugs don't 'match' but it's only the casing which is different.

[IM]http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9638/cablesallfinished.jpg[/IMG]

:)
Click to expand...
What connectors do you use? I quite like the Neutrik value RCA's, less than £1 each but they are touch, gold plated and work perfectly with the Neutrik chassis connector, even if they are a little stiff when new...
 
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I used these:

http://www.studiospares.com/Connectors/Precision-Phono-Plug-Metal-Single/invt/568130

And this:

http://www.studiospares.com/Cable-Unbalanced-/Sommer-Tricone-Green-6mm-Dia/invt/546830

The green is cheaper for no known reason, that's why I used it! Mabye more like £9 for the set of cables looking at it, unless it's gone up from when I bought those parts. I'd avoid the red version of the plug and use a bit of heatshrink to identify L and R leads instead so the plugs 'match' :)


I think I know those Neutrik ones, used one for a coax digital connection. It did seem stiff yeah, but I rarely unplug it some it's no problem. You get cable strain relief with them if that's needed, but I prefer the Studiospares ones overall.
 
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Dr.EM said:
I used these:

http://www.studiospares.com/Connectors/Precision-Phono-Plug-Metal-Single/invt/568130

And this:

http://www.studiospares.com/Cable-Unbalanced-/Sommer-Tricone-Green-6mm-Dia/invt/546830

The green is cheaper for no known reason, that's why I used it! Mabye more like £9 for the set of cables looking at it, unless it's gone up from when I bought those parts. I'd avoid the red version of the plug and use a bit of heatshrink to identify L and R leads instead so the plugs 'match' :)


I think I know those Neutrik ones, used one for a coax digital connection. It did seem stiff yeah, but I rarely unplug it some it's no problem. You get cable strain relief with them if that's needed, but I prefer the Studiospares ones overall.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I think I may try some of those Studiospares plugs, as I'm running low on RCA's, but have loads of cable. I think I bought about 50m when Farnell were selling some Van Damme stuff off cheap. :)
 
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