So I'm surfing EBay and I see this matched pair. of U67's

**animix** · 05-20-2005, 10:05 PM

The action says they're in Socorro New Mexico. I've been to Socorro. Socorro New Mexico is about 4 hours from here. Socorro is also a place where you probably wouldn't want to visit with your pockets full of cash unless you were packing.
Well, anyway, it's a 3 day auction, the seller is an EBay newbie, registered the day of the auction and therefore, has no track record.............so I think to myself.............hummmm..........these look nice so I e-mailed him and told him that I wanted to drive down to Socorro to look these over before I bid. Since this time, we have shared a few e-mails and he
has offered to sell them to me for about 1/3 of what they are worth.............and now he's in Indiana. He will not provide any verifiable contact info. If anyone here has been bidding on these mics, be careful.

**animix** · 05-20-2005, 10:30 PM

The auction has been pulled from EBay. I figured the guy might have sold them off auction............but no. He just called me on my cell. Speaks almost unintelligible english but he was throwing some spanish at me so so I switched to spanish. This sort of surprised him and he then acted like he didn't understand spanish either. I insisted on seeing the mics. He came up with 16517921563 reasons why this wouldn't be possible, but *his boss* would be glad to ship them to me from New Mexico. He was too busy and was heading for the UK tonight. In a nutshell, this guy is all over the map. It's a scam (why am I surprised?). If you have bid on this auction and this guy contacts you, tell him hi for me.

**Wireline** · 05-20-2005, 11:36 PM

As a followup, Animix and I spoke on the phone a few times about this...seems a musician I use often (and dear friend) knows the guy who owns a high end private facility near there...I had my friend call him to find out what was up...my buddy tells me his contact there has no reported stolen items; there isn't a facility anywhere NEAR Socorro that has anything more than a sound card and a Samson mic; and that in the past Socorro and the immediate vicinity were well known as a theives den.

Maybe Animix and I could meet in the town in question...I've been known to carry a concealed weapon (or 6)...and who knows? If indeed the guy does have them, a really pissed off Coloradan and a REALLY pissed off West Texan might each come out with a pretty good deal on a mic...

**animix** · 05-21-2005, 12:47 AM

Originally posted by Wireline:
<STRONG>As a followup, Animix and I spoke on the phone a few times about this...seems a musician I use often (and dear friend) knows the guy who owns a high end private facility near there...I had my friend call him to find out what was up...my buddy tells me his contact there has no reported stolen items; there isn't a facility anywhere NEAR Socorro that has anything more than a sound card and a Samson mic; and that in the past Socorro and the immediate vicinity were well known as a theives den.

Maybe Animix and I could meet in the town in question...I've been known to carry a concealed weapon (or 6)...and who knows? If indeed the guy does have them, a really pissed off Coloradan and a REALLY pissed off West Texan might each come out with a pretty good deal on a mic...

</STRONG>

I've gotten 3 more emails from this guy. Now he has already left the country,BTW, so I guess he's wifi'ing from a direct flight from Indianapolis to London. Wanker for sure. If I thought we could find a couple of '67's out in the desert, I'd meet up with you. I imagine we'd be on a snipe hunt. One good thing has come of this. I found a matched pair of 4050's for $620.00 over at Gearslutz while checking to see if anyone was getting scammed over there.........and i bought them from a very nice individual. Not quite U67's, but at least they are for real and I'm sure they will show up on my doorstep.

**David Satz** · 11-06-2006, 11:48 PM

Just as a belated note: Whenever anyone tries to sell you a "matched pair" of vintage microphones, you might ask yourself whether they might be ignorant, dishonest, or some tasty mixture of both. "Matched pair" and "vintage" simply don't go together, at least in the usual meanings of those terms.

[1] Assuming that the U 67s were a matched pair when they left the factory, that says little or nothing about how well they would match today. Capsules change their characteristics over time even if they're well taken care of, but there seems to be no discernable pattern to the way that aging affects them. It's not as if they all gradually lose their high-frequency response (like our ears do), or any one other symptom like that.

I've never seen any formal research published on this topic and would love to. But in general, it seems that the chances of a "matched pair" still being well matched after 20+ years are no greater than the chances of a previously UNmatched pair becoming "spontaneously matched" during that same period of time--in other words, very small indeed.

[2] Back when the U 67 was manufactured, Neumann didn't sell matched pairs of microphones. They sold single microphones and they sold stereo microphones; that was it. Apart from behind-the-scenes personal favors on a one-off basis, Neumann has begun to sell matched pairs of microphones only in the past few years. Prior to that, some of their national distributors sold "stereo sets" of certain popular models--but that was well after the "vintage era" had ended by any reasonable definition, and those sets didn't contain factory matched pairs anyway; they were simply microphones with consecutive serial numbers.

If anyone doesn't get the distinction, we can talk about it, but just briefly, please consider that within a batch of, say, forty condenser microphones, the performance of the capsules will vary far more than the performance of the circuitry. Yet the body or "amplifier" of the microphone is the part with the serial number that most of us see. So, out of a batch of capsules--which are manufactured separately from the amplifiers--why would the two closest ones just happen to end up being mounted on two amplifiers with consecutive serial numbers? (Answer: They probably wouldn't.)

--best regards

**PinkNoise** · 11-07-2006, 06:13 AM

David Satz! Congratulations and thanks for your clearly written and sensible post.

**Veto** · 11-21-2006, 04:21 PM

Theres always one big give away for scam auctions on ebay. And thats if they list there email address in the description.

They tell you not to use the ebay email address, that you need to contact them directly through the email address provided. For various reasons of course.

Private auctions is the next step to scamville, although there are some legit auctions that use private listings, asking for your email address plus private listing = scam.

If you dont spot this, and its and auction to where the scammer got ahold of a legit ebayer's account ususally done by spoofing, who might have high feedback, the next big one is always WESTERN UNION. If they ask for WESTERN UNION its a scam,. Western union is pretty much a one way ticket to you loosing your money and thats that.

Good luck

heres a good example of a scam on ebay. Im not sure how many days it will be up, but im sure if you email the guy he will have some crazy story that will entitle you to ship him money western union to outside of the country.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Avalon-VT-737sp-...QQcmdZViewItem

**Bill@WelcomeHomeStudios** · 11-21-2006, 07:49 PM

Just to follow up on Daivd's comments, there is also no industry standard about what constitutes 'matched'. NO definition. Each manufacturer is free to invent his own. In my opinion, this has always been basic BS. Also, for the reasons that David stated and others, the chance of a pair of matched microphones staying matched is questionable.

I've never understood the facination, myself. As they cannot occupy the same space at the same time, there is little chance of them recieving the same signal anyway.

Bill

**Andreas Lassak** · 11-21-2006, 08:42 PM

Originally Posted by Veto

http://cgi.ebay.com/Avalon-VT-737sp-...QQcmdZViewItem

It already has been removed.

**William Wittman** · 11-22-2006, 04:25 AM

Originally Posted by Veto

Theres always one big give away for scam auctions on ebay. And thats if they list there email address in the description.

Yes.
That's USUALLY, at least, the sign of a "hijacked" user account.

When i see this, if i am interested in the item, I always ask a question using the EBay "ask seller a question" form.
INVARIABLY the guy had no idea what i was talking about or that an auction was running in his name.

If you suspect a scam, do EVERYONE a favour and REPORT the auction to ebay.