Made in Mexico SM 57s

[ajkimba]

I bought some SM57 microphones off fleabay and noticed that the gain on my mixer needs to be up three or four notches more to get a good signal then my 15 year old SM57....? I start to get unwanted hum as the gain setting is kind of high, IMO.

Is it what you get now compared to years ago? Does anyone know if the old SM57s were made differently? I'm debating whether to send them back, I still get a signal good for recording and PA but what gives, cheaper construction?

[s151669]

There has been counterfeit chinese made "Shure" mics in circulation. At least in one case, symptoms vere like:

- bougth off ebay
- connector screw works wrong way
- lighter than original
- impedance > 500 ohms, should be like 16 ohm or so
- more sensitive to handling noise
- incorrect wire colours inside - altough I could see how real ones could have changed colours too
- fragile internal wiring

Fake vs real one

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/393119/fake_real.pdf

fakes are on odd pages, real ones on even pages.

Can't provide more info on that, just something I happened to stumble on on the intaarweb. The original stuff is in Finnish at

http://muusikoiden.net/artikkelit/1489

Hopefully you did not stumble on the same thing :-I

[ajkimba]

Thanks for the info.

I called Shure and they are indeed fake knock-offs

The seller agreed to take them back, we'll see, live and learn.