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Author Topic: Warning! Fake VF14 Tubes On EBay!  (Read 35576 times)

Oliver Archut

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #15 on: February 24, 2008, 11:04:14 AM »

Hello Norm,

please open your none working light bulb and you will probably find that the inners inside your tube is not a VF14 system.
There are pics off VF14 inners in the archives that I posted several times so comparing them will be easy, also you can measure the filament and you will probably find too, that the DC reading is off.

You also will probably find if you place your box under the microscope that the VF14 stamp on the box was redone after the original designation was carefully sanded off.

Best regards,
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Oliver Archut
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panman

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2008, 11:12:10 AM »

Klaus Heyne wrote on Sat, 23 February 2008 17:07


How would you do shill bidding on serial-numbered items sold more than once by the same seller? EBay would shut the auction down, and, before that, alert forum users would alert us here about any such scam.

What if the item in question is sold by the "friend", who won it?  On what grounds would Ebay be able to close down the auction then? It surely would stink provided somebody really was noting the case and the serial-numbers, but the item "belongs" to him. He clearly is entitled to sell it if he wishes to.
But you certainly hit a point with:"alert forum users would alert us here about any such scam".That may well be the best weapon against the scams.
Quote:

Given that every bidder in very auction should at least understand and adhere to some basics required in any auction bidding, like setting a comfortable upper limit for oneself and sticking to it, and not chasing your own bids in the last few minutes of a run-away- bidding war, a buyer will not likely pay higher prices than the supply and demand at the time had established.

But clearly higher than "justified" a price was paid of that item. I am not saying it was a scam, but would like to hear an explanation to it. Obviously not every bidder is a reader of this forum, so they don`t get warned. And of course it can also happen, that the bidders go nuts about an auction and do pay much higher prices just so.
Regards,
      Esa

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Klaus Heyne

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2008, 01:41:51 PM »

Oliver Archut wrote on Sun, 24 February 2008 08:04

Hello Norm,

please open your non-working "VF14" and you will probably find that the innerds inside your tube are not from a VF14 system.



Norm, please confirm that:

1. the seller was the same seller  as the one who has just sold one of these tubes for more than $2,000 ("lawerencepilot")

2. that the seller sold the tube as a VF14 tube and showed a picture which contained the (never before opened?) box with the tube's serial number, or the tube with a serial number

3. you have notified eBay for having been defrauded

Before you do all that, please do what Oliver said you should do. If you feel uncomfortable opening the tube, please make use of my help and Oliver's. We will examine the tube for you as a service for the forum's recording community and a warning to anyone about buying VF14 tubes on eBay, if it turns out to be a fraudulent tube.




Norm contacted me privately and mentioned that  he will explain in detail his experience after he returns from a business trip, in about a week K.H.
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Klaus Heyne
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J.J. Blair

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #18 on: February 24, 2008, 01:45:16 PM »

Norm, did you ever contact eBay to alert them to the scam?  Even if you provided good feedback, you can use dispute resolution.
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mshilarious

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2008, 11:04:02 PM »

Klaus,

There are several hallmarks of a shill bidding seller that were easy to recognize, back before eBay hid bidder identities once an auction had closed.  I have had success in taking down auctions and even sellers with well-researched alerts to eBay.

The first hint is the same buyer bidding on multiple unrelated items from the same seller.  That is enough to arose suspicion, but usually not enough for eBay to take action.  Some sellers do have legitimate customers who buy a lot of items from them.

The next behavior to watch for is loser bids.  Most experienced bidders know to add a few pennies to a bid, to increase the chance of beating an inexperienced buyer who bids in even increments.  Loser bidders do the opposite, they will put in bids at $99.99, for example.  Often you might see a sequence of increasing bids ("nibbles"), each a "loser bid".  The shilling seller is trying to extract the highest possible value for the item by forcing the legitimate bidders to pay their maximum bid.

If the shilling seller goes too high, then you will often see a bid retraction, just for the final bid.  That will leave the penultimate shill bid just below the victim's high bid.

Finally, you can review the seller's feedback.  If they have received positive feedback from a buyer immediately after a sale of goods, that is a obvious indication that it was not a legitimate transaction, since shipment and receipt cannot have occurred in 10 minutes!  Avoid such sellers at all costs.

Be careful out there!

Regards,

Jon
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Klaus Heyne

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #20 on: February 25, 2008, 11:34:24 PM »

Excellent clarification on shill bidding! May I ask one question, though:
mshilarious wrote on Mon, 25 February 2008 20:04


...The first hint is the same buyer bidding on multiple unrelated items from the same seller...
How do I know it's the same buyer during an auction where bidders' identities are not revealed (private auction)?

The feedback section of past auctions of the multiple VF14 seller is certainly more revealing: he also auctioned six other microphone-related items a couple of days earlier. And guess what? All six were bought by one individual with ONE SINGLE positive feedback! I.e. no eBay history whatsoever...
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Klaus Heyne
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J.J. Blair

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #21 on: February 26, 2008, 11:40:28 AM »

Quote:

The feedback section of past auctions of the multiple VF14 seller is certainly more revealing: he also auctioned six other microphone-related items a couple of days earlier. And guess what? All six were bought by one individual with ONE SINGLE positive feedback! I.e. no eBay history whatsoever...




Klaus, it was on that basis, with that one dubious auction winner, that I had reported the guy to eBay.  But as you can see, nothing happened.
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studio info

They say the heart of Rock & Roll is still beating, which is amazing if you consider all the blow it's done over the years.

"The Internet enables pompous blowhards to interact with other pompous blowhards in a big circle jerk of pomposity." - Bill Maher

"The negative aspects of this business, not only will continue to prevail, but will continue to accelerate in madness. Conditions aren't going to get better, because the economics of rock and roll are getting closer and closer to the economics of Big Business America." - Bill Graham

mwurfl

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #22 on: February 26, 2008, 07:16:53 PM »

I have to say I find this whole thread quite depressing.  I'm certainly old enough to not be naive, and I know all-too-well how many scammers and grifters there are out there.  But, in the grand scheme of the economy at large, the pro audio community is very small, and for the cheaters and scammers to have "drilled down" to our level to try to cheat audio pros whose chief professional motivation is to make better-sounding music for the joy and benefit of all is, well, just depressing.  Shame on them.

But, thank you to JJ, Klaus, and others who are watching and doing any small part to expose these shameful people.

Mark Wurfl
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mshilarious

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Re: VF14 Tube Auction At Record Price
« Reply #23 on: February 27, 2008, 09:35:59 PM »

Klaus Heyne wrote on Mon, 25 February 2008 22:34

Excellent clarification on shill bidding! May I ask one question, though:
mshilarious wrote on Mon, 25 February 2008 20:04


...The first hint is the same buyer bidding on multiple unrelated items from the same seller...
How do I know it's the same buyer during an auction where bidders' identities are not revealed (private auction)?


You have correctly observed that you are not able to tell.  Indeed, a seller that runs nothing but private auctions should be avoided, for that very reason.  There are some reasons to run a private auction on certain items where the buyer's identity needs to be protected, but those situations are rare, and the seller should have run many other public auctions before they can be trusted.

eBay's policies have declined so it's not surprising that their response to reports of shilling has also declined.  Contrast this with their recent public statements about wanting to improve security for buyers, and you can see why many people have grown frustrated with their service.  At the time I made many of my reports, I was a Powerseller (which requires a minimum monthly sales volume).  But there was a time when reports about fraudulent auctions were handled more promptly, even when they didn't come from high volume sellers.
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Oliver Archut

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Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #24 on: March 07, 2008, 11:31:44 PM »

Hello Guys,

over the last few years fake VF14 tubes showed up a couple of times on e-bay, here is a pick of the latest fake that several tube mic collectors, repairmen as well as others bought.
Like with all specialty items that range in the thousands of dollars, if you buy them, get them inspected by a specialist and if the seller does not agree to it, there is a 99% chance that something is wrong.

The tube shown, was sold by a guy with the ebay alias Lawerence Pilot in California. This is the same eBay seller whose other auctioned 'VF14' tube is shown at the beginning of this thread! I have no clue if he was a victim of a scammer too, not knowing what he sold. An inspection revealed that the tube in question was not a VF14, but a pretty good fake made out of an UF14. After a couple of tries and talks, the seller final refunded the money to the buyer.

Best regards,

index.php/fa/8017/0/
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Oliver Archut
www.tab-funkenwerk.com

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Klaus Heyne

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Re: Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #25 on: March 08, 2008, 12:52:39 AM »

Today I received from a client one of the many fake VF14 that were auctioned by "Lawerence Pilot" recently (see Oliver's post and my starting post.)

The easiest to measure tell-tale sign whether an otherwise authentic looking octagonal steel tube is truly a VF14 is its heater resistance:

VF14 = ca. 156-160 Ohms
UF14 = ca. 31-35 Ohms
EF14 = less than 5 Ohms

Just stick an ohm meter between the center pin of the array of five pins and the one right next to it on the right. These are the heater terminations.

The tube in question measured 35 Ohms. This was proof that it was a relabeled UF14 which cannot be used in a U47 and, even after laborious modifications of mic and power supply, will never sound like one either.
For final proof, I then sawed the questionable tube open, to show the different construction of the two tubes, visible mostly around the plate cutouts.

Left picture shows genuine VF14, right picture shows UF14.
(It's actually not a good idea to install a UF14 tube in a U47 without making changes in the power supply: the precious wire wound resistor in the mic's wall will blow up otherwise.)


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Klaus Heyne
German Masterworks
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Klaus Heyne

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Re: Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2008, 01:20:54 AM »

This picture shows the top of a genuine VF14.
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Klaus Heyne
German Masterworks
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Klaus Heyne

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Re: Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #27 on: March 08, 2008, 01:29:51 AM »

This picture shows a relabeled UF14. Note the blurry and smeared imaging of the bad screen print. The faker rubbed out the Tele diamond and 'UF14' and not very professionally painted a new diamond and 'VF14' on the tube.
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Klaus Heyne
German Masterworks
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Klaus Heyne

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Re: Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #28 on: March 08, 2008, 01:38:14 AM »

Finally, this picture shows the original UF14 carton which, except of course for the "VF14 M"script, is a genuine Telefunken box. Note the rubbed out area visible under the newly printed "VF14M". That's where it used to say "UF14". To hide the dirty deed, the faker strategically placed a piece of scotch tape over the newly printed 'VF14",  right where he rubbed out the original tube designation.
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Klaus Heyne
German Masterworks
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Arf! Mastering

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Re: Fake VF14M tubes
« Reply #29 on: March 08, 2008, 05:34:10 AM »

J.J., now that this crook has been busted, can you contact ebay again, reminding them of your first alert, and providing this new evidence?
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