Counterfeit Chinese Cables

Here’s a little story for you.  I worked at a very high end audio equipment manufacturer for many years.  The owner decided he might want to release their own cables to sell with their systems.  Good idea of course.  The company’s CD player’s were already being turn-keyed in Hong Kong.  Designed, built and packaged there with our name.  So while over seas he visited a large cable manufacturer.  They sat down and discussed what kind of cables he wanted.  The manufacturer pulls out a big book with samples and shows him all the cables they already manufacture for various well known high end companies (I won’t say the names but you know them all) and tells him they can make the same thing with maybe a different color or whatever and says “we can put your name on any of them”.  This is the way much of this stuff works with the fakes.  Not all of course.  Some is pure crap!  But some is made on the identical machines with identical materials and sold to whoever will pay for it.  Maybe they put different connectors on it or maybe identical ones.  It is true the soldering/weld may not be the same if a company just buys the wire and does their own thing, or it may be the identical cable made in the same factory as the name brand with identical materials.  That’s the problem with counterfeits is you don’t know what your getting until you get it.  No box.  No paperwork.  Just the cables. 
 

I have purchased several counterfeit cables to try out and have been completely happy with them over the years. Yes I have a “champagne taste on a beer budget”.  I have purchased many high end cables directly from the manufacturer’s for 50% off when I worked in the industry.  So yes I have a variety of cables that are the real thing lying around from some great companies.  Some of the top of the line Audioquest, Cardas, Kimber Silver, etc.  I have also purchased some fake Audioquest and Furutech cables that have amazed me with their quality.  Right now I’m running all Furutech PCOCC (or OHNO) speaker and interconnects and getting some of the best, most balanced sound I have ever had and it was cheap. 
 

So are these identical in every way?  I don’t know for sure but the sound quality is amazing!  Can you get a crap counterfeit?  For sure, yes.  
As someone said you roll the dice.

Seems like the long thread on this subject has been taken down.

I don’t mind using knock-offs, and in this particular field, I don’t mind using counterfeits. I use a pair of knock-offs of Kimber 12TC speaker cables. They are not advertised as Kimber, but appear to be made in about the very same way. I would not mind, nor should anyone, if the maker advertised them as "Compare to Kimber." After all, Walmart advertises their generic aspirin product as "Compare to Bayer" or some such thing.

I have a fake pair of "Nordost Odin 2 XLR cables" on the way from China. Several people have written of their happiness with these cables, here and elsewhere. These are counterfeits. However, given that Nordost charges the price of a small house or a large car for a pair with that name, I’m not losing any sleep over it. Yet I would prefer if the Chinese makers sold them unmarked and advertised as "Compare to Nordost Odin 2."

The moderators may take these threads down from time to time.  However, given how the domestic cable manufacturers have treated us over the decades, we will keep on buying from China.  For there, the prices come reasonably close to the costs of manufacture of these relatively simple products.

Good point.  It would be nice if they advertised that way.  Although on some cables I’m not all together sure they are not the real thing, made with a “run” of the real cable, at the same factory.  Just not “run” for the brand name company.  
 

It is crazy the prices these companies are charging.  I know there is R&D, advertising, supporting they’re lifestyles, etc.  But $2K, $5K, $10K or even $100K for a 1 meter pair of cables!  Come on.  I remember one advertising executive at a audio company I worked at many years ago said “we have to charge more to show we’re the best”.  Well I love the audio biz and I really love listening to music but I never made the big bucks.  So I have to buy what I can afford.  

Well said harpo75. No need to feel sorry for these guys. I’m certain that they exaggerate the years that they spend on "research" by a factor of five, and these cables are not being purchased by their demographic.

Thanks to the moderators for reinstating this thread, minus most of the previous content. I've been here since '98 and I've never seen that before!

I should mention, Ali-E also has many other well known cable copies, AND, no-name at even cheaper prices

Also many are returnable, though it takes ~ 3 weeks to get to the Florida, so return at least as long on purchasers dime and the time to process, which is why I started with the Odin 2 coax cable, and was shocked compared to the Pangea Premier XL which is a darn good cable. Then slowly with Odin PC and XLR, the more PCs, and finally the speaker cable, which is not the same configuration as Nordosts (round instead of ribbon), but is amazing