I've been contemplating getting a new preamp installed in my acoustic. It currently has a Fishman Isys-T but I'd like to have something with an EQ. I emailed Fishman and they recommended the
Presys+ or the
Prefix Plus. I have found lots of Presys+ on eBay for about £10 from China, while on Amazon they are a lot more, although a pickup is included.
Do the Chinese ones sound like they might be the real deal? They certainly look real. Is this the kind of thing that is being knocked off these days or they just OEM models?
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So the question now is, is it ethical?
I think I know the answer to that. If you have to ask... Honestly, my need for a new preamp does not supercede my ability to come up with a few extra quid. If I need it, I can wait, save up, or just do without.
The price difference is considerable, though - £10 versus £299.
Let's put it to a vote - how many people here would just buy one and stop worrying about it? How many would leave it alone and move on?
As for ethical, lets go back for a minute to the most basic of laws, the Ten Commandments. If you should not murder, steal or commit adultery but you thin it is alright for you to do so then it must be alright for everyone to do so. Where would society be if everyone murdered, stole and committed adultery? Not great.
If every manufacturer that produced branded goods under contract decided to ignore the contract and sell direct to the customer, what goods or brands would still be in existence? Not a single Epiphone, Ibanez, Tanglewood, Faith, and many other makes of guitar would not be around as the head office is not the manufacturer - and the problem is compounded by the factory not being the designer.
Nevertheless, it is a personal decision whether you wish to help society work or whether you think you are the exception to the rule and can get away with a great product at a back door price. I am sure I have done so in the past but now I try to do what I believe is right. You have to make your own decision on what you will do. Put me down for leaving it alone and moving on to either the proper, legit product or looking at cheaper alternatives from competitors.
I remember getting asked years ago by an automotive design house who had links with China to quote for a full test programme for an off-road vehicle. It turned out to be for a Chinese company who were planning to take a Mitsubishi Shogun and just copy the platform, just changing it from the sills up. Needless to say we declined to be involved. I think I'm right in saying that the Chinese lady who was the director involved ended up going to prison for fraud
If something came to me for free (i.e. an idea popped into my head) then why should I profit from it? When I say "something" came to me for free, I include music I've composed (there are only twelve notes, arrange them as you will), lyrics and articles I've written (there are only a few thousand English words, arrange them as you will), electronic circuits I've designed (there are only a few hundred relevant components at any one time, arrange them as you will) and software I've written (there are only a few keywords, structures etc in a programming language, arrange them as you will). I don't see that the process of arranging these things is worth very much; the labour of doing so should be paid at a suitable hourly rate, dependent on the skill involved.
In my view, artists and designers should not be paid in perpetuity for their creations! In a musical context, this means musicians should be paid for their performance, either at a concert or in a studio. They should not profit excessively from sales of their music, and nor should anyone else. Just as an architect is paid a once-off fee for designing a building, so musicians should be paid a once-off session fee for recording a song. The architect doesn't get royalties for ever, so why should a musician?
To paraphrase a leftist saying, intellectual property is intellectual theft. By preventing people from using your creations, you're impoverishing humanity as a whole. If something can be made in China for £10 why should we pay £300 for it? That's £290 going into someone's pocket for nothing, and it's probably not the original creator who's getting it.
In case you're wondering, yes I have had some of my creations copied and sold illicitly. (Electronic hardware and software reverse engineered.) Do I care? No, "emulation is the sincerest form of flattery". It's a good thing that someone has thought it worthwhile to copy and that other people have benefited. I feel I've made a valued contribution.
I say good luck to the Chinese copyists for making things available at a considerably lower price! Now if they can solve their quality problems (as the Japanese did) we'll benefit even more.
Shoot me down in flames!
I thought you made your point well. I made mine above.
As far as artists profiting is concerned, you get everything for free anyhow! Your time, your ideas, the materials you work with. Everything comes from the earth at some point.
It's more a matter of value. How much do you value something? Then exchange something of equal value to benefit from it.
In other news, I'm a big fan of bartering and have made a few happy deals. It's more grass roots, and everyone wins.
For the record, if you steal my stuff, I ain't gonna be happy.
The same goes for artistic endeavor. Why would anyone fund a movie if it was just going to be legally copied and distributed on the first day of release? Why would an artist spend months of their life creating anything if that could then be legally copied and distributed?
I'd suggest that the example of an architect is a slight red herring. Surely a more appropriate analogy involving the architect would be if he designed a building, and then the building was copied in many other locations. In that case I'd say he does deserve a royalty for each identical building put up, but it kind of depends on how he's negotiated his contract.
I guess there can also be issues involving damage to an organisation's reputation. For example, the Screaming Dave Amplifier Company Inc designs and manufactures a beautiful boutique amp, with a cabinet upholstered in tie-died rainbow suede and a colour-changing illuminated logo on the front. As it happens, the amp inside the cabinet is top-notch and is widely reckoned to be the best amp in the world. Then someone else buys one and copies it. They still use the rainbow suede and light-up logo, and the amp inside is the same circuit but instead of point-to-point hand-wired circuitry, they've stuffed it all on a PCB, dispensed with the valve rectifier and used much cheaper transformers. It sounds pants. But people buy it, thinking it's an original SDACI amp, and hate it, then word spreads on fora like this that SDACI amps are over-priced rubbish. They've now damaged my company, we go out of business and I have to sack all my workforce. That, surely, cannot be right. Can it?
I'm with you. Nobody wants to work for free, and everyone needs something of value to trade with people to get what they can't make.
I think it's easy for creatives to undervalue what they do because to them it's easy. To other people it's hard so they are willing to pay for it. I'm sure everyone here has had someone come up to them after playing and say "wow, how do you DO that?" You shrug and say "oh, it's nothing...." To you, yes. To them, not so much. Therefore it has no value to you, but to them it could be priceless.