Hi team!
I’m scared that I might come across one of these (if they exist).
How can I tell the difference between the fakes and real deal!?
What model?
I’m looking at the Voyager currently. But overall, are Moogs (or synthesizers for that matter) counter-fitted by China?
How do I know that my Little Phatty Stage II is the genuine article for eg?
I’ve never heard of a Chinese clone of any synth.
Unlike guitars, which are relatively low tech (i.e. easy to replicate in general form if not specific detail) and comparatively high volume, analogue synthesizers are generally boutique instruments and don’t attract the same sort of counterfeiting problems.
I’d be more worried about individual components used unwittingly by repair techs who buy an esoteric part from overseas only to find that it’s a counterfeit.
If you are paying $500 for a Voyager or some seriously low amount, it’s stolen. Not counterfeit.
Although I’ve never heard of a Chinese copy of a Moog, we do know that some parts of recent Moogs have been made in China. We know about keyboards, and I wonder if there are other parts as well.
If so, it’s asking for sub-standard parts that were supposed to be destroyed to be stockpiled by someone wanting to make counterfeit Moogs. In any case, quality control in Chinese factories is well known to be so arbitrary that it’s a joke - or would be if people hadn’t died from defective and adulterated food products.
There have been some recent instances of defective Voyagers. I know of one in Britain, and the owner of that one mentioned someone in Australia with serious problems as well.
Moog themselves really need to clarify these issues. People don’t just pay Moog prices for the Moog sound. They also pay for Moog build-quality and reliability, and if there’s any danger of that being compromised then the company needs to address it. It’s in their interests as well as their customers’ interests. Cost-cutting could mean higher profits now but the end of the company not very far down the line.
Thanks for replying guys. I too haven’t heard of any synths being counterfeited by China. But someone suggested that EVERYTHING is copied by China.
The cynical side of me widely assumes that maybe they are counterfeited and that some naughty dealers even sell those rather than the real thing. So I ask again, how can I verify that my Moog is the real deal?
So only the keyboard part is made in China? Hmm…
Why only the keyboard part? Where are the other parts made in? USA? Where are the Moogs assembled?
There are counterfeit components like the ua726 and others. An analog synth is way too complex to counterfeit compared to a guitar, lots of fake vintage Fenders or Gibsons out there. Fender stopped selling logo overlays for the headstocks way back in the 70s due to counterfeiters. Recently one fake Les Paul was even on display in the window of a local store.
One of the reasons companies will discontinue a component is because of counterfeits on the market. They will just assign a new part number.
How sure are we that analogue Synthesizers cant be counterfeited? China seems to be counterfeiting everything from mobile phones to cars.
Fatar makes the keyboards; so, they can come from fatar. http://www.fatar.com/pages/TP_8SK.htm and http://www.fatar.com/pages/TP_7BA.htm
I am not sure if they outsource any manufacturing.
The “boards” that were referred to being made in China on the LP were the circuit boards. Actual components on the circuit boards, probably china. As far as I know (not 100% on this one) , the circuit boards on the phatties are made, populated, and soldered in China.
All moogs undergo final assembly in Ashville, NC.
Come on, guys. No one is going to reverse engineer and set up manufacturing for a product that sells, maybe, 1000 units a year.
1000 a year where? US alone or do you mean internationally? I would assume Moog sells much more analogue synths than that.
I wouldn’t assume that. The serial numbers on them are pretty low. Not a high volume thing, these Moogs. My Voyager is in the 200’s, but it is 5 years old or so. If there are much more than 2500 of them, I’d be surprised.
It is virtually impossible to buy any high tech device, car or PC today that doesn’t have at least some Chinese parts in it.
Quality varies, but can be very good and is getting better throughout China.
Some US made parts have gotten worse over the years too. Switchcraft comes to mind.
Anyway, I agree with Chris Winkels’ and MC’s posts above.
I doubt you will run into counterfeit Minimoogs, be them Model D or Voyager.
Counterfeiting only makes sense in small parts sold in high volume or rare art pieces sold in small numbers.
It doesn’t make any financial sense to copy a currently produced original.
However if one considers the Behringer marketing ethic (or lack of), it might be possible to one day see clones of Moogerfoogers, Etherwaves or even Lil Phattys.
Something like this could cost Moog a lot of money in legal fees.
I can tell you that Tektronix, with approval from, and at the direction of Danaher, the parent company that recently bought out the previously publicly held Oregon manufacturer of the best electronic test equipment in the world, is now having all their equipment “counterfeited” in China. AND, we sent a bunch of people over there to teach them how to do it. Very disturbing in my opinion.
So you mean that manufacturing is now off-shore but it is official Tektronix? If it is with the permission of the manufacturer, these are still Tektronix products. The country something is made should not be important (although I completely agree that it seems right that USA products are manufactured in the USA). Tektronix has a fine reputation. But of course experimenting with how low you can go cutting costs will eventually hit rock bottom. Then the brand gets trashed.
The Moogs are proudly described as made in Asheville. All I have seen is the final assembly in their factory. Where the boards are assembled is something else. So perhaps we have all bought Chinese made Moogs 
Just to clarify this point before moving on to some other points: in a separate discussion in this forum it wa established that although at one time the Voyager keyboards were made by Fatar, later ones are Chinese-made (some of them anyway).
On Chinese manufacture in general, the issues can be quite complicated:
Some Chinese-made electronic goods are excellent. I have a number of them, including the Lexicon reverbs that I make a lot of use of.
But as I mentioned earlier, quality control can be extremely lax in Chinese factories, and it’s well attested that corruption is rife, at least in some areas. Adulterated foods have led to large numbers of deaths in some cases, and there have been related health issues such as lead-based paints in items intended for small children.
There are also human rights issues. A few years ago there was a dreadful incident where a factory burned down and literally hundreds of people died because the doors were locked. Whether this was a prison factory or not was never clarified by the Chinese authorities, but in any case the incident in pretty horrific. If you take a moment or two to imagine hundreds of people being burned to death…
Chinese musical instruments have a bad reputation, some of it well-deserved, some of it not. To take violins as an example, there are some truly appalling Chinese violins made in factories where no-one plays the violin or has any idea how to make anything other than a violin-shaped object. On the other hand there are well-respected Chinese violin makers who I believe make quality instruments. Such people suffer from the very widespread cynical money-for-any-old-rubbish attitude prevalent in China as a whole.
Then there’s the vexed question of whether we should support the Chinese economy at all until they address their appalling record of human rights abuses. I personally think there are no easy answers to that. I’m appalled by what the Chinese have done to Tibet, but boycotting Chinese goods may easily affect the wrong people, and my own approach has been to support the Tibetans rather than try to exert possibly inappropriate pressure on the Chinese. I’m also just as appalled by what the Chinese have done to their own people on occasions. On the other hand I do think pressure should have been exerted by governments and by the Olympic Committee when we had that appalling farce a few years ago. And for that matter I’ve been troubled about buying American goods because of the practices of several American governments, but boycotting Moog or Fender or a small independent flute maker I bought from wouldn’t really have exerted pressure in the relevant quarters.
So all these issues exist with China, and may also exist in other cases whoever we buy from. I do think we need to know what’s happening, though, especially when serious defects with Moog instruments have been reported on a couple of recent occasions.
I have it on good authority that the boards are stuffed locally near Asheville.
The days that companies like Moog maintained their own PC board fabrication line are long gone. Rigid enforcement on environmental controls and the high cost of compliance and controls of hazardous chemicals involved with the process made it too expensive. It became far more efficient to contract that business out to companies that specialize in PC board fab (yes there are plenty of such companies in the states).
A repeat of the 1911 Triangle Shirt Factory fire in NYC, under dangerously similar conditions… Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.