[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
geoff wrote:
On 21/03/2019 12:03 AM, Mike Rivers wrote:
the real thing from a legitimate distributor, and dropped them when the
line when t

It was a little more complicated than that.

Those China MC012s were commissioned by the UK distributor for Oktava
who , rightly or wrongly, asserted that they has rights to do that. Even
the label on the mics said "MC012 by ASM" or something like that to
differentiate from the Russia ones which were, at the time, of extremely
variable quality.

They were of extremely variable quality because the aforementioned
distributor (who actually had exclusive distribution throughout the West,
not just the UK) pressured the manufacturer to churn them out as cheaply
as possible... and when they found a way to get them even cheaper they
went to another manufacturer.

It seems that Oktava signed a very bad contract with McKay, which gave
McKay not only exclusive distribution rights for the whole world outside
Russia, but also exclusive use of the Oktava name. This sort of thing
happened frequently after the fall of the Soviet Union when people who
were not used to the way business in the West is done were suddenly thrust
into contact with practices they had never dreamed of.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."