From: Aaron Ximm <>
> I've noticed that there are a number of mics that appear in auctions which
> end, and then reappear a week or two later, over and over. In particular
> there are two mics up now, an MKH-80 and an MKH-40, that have been listed
> several times -- many times in the case of the latter.
>
> I know sometimes the reserve isn't met, but I'm pretty sure at least in
> these cases it has. Are there really that many flakey buyers out there?
> Aren't the sellers obligated to report if some damage (etc) comes to light
> that makes the buyers legitimately back out?
>
> So... any experience with why this is happening...? It's definitely made
> me leery of bidding on those particular mics (though the description
> hasn't changed for either, and both sellers appear to be well-ranked...).
> Which is a shame since with the 80 and 40 I could get an M/S pair for <
> $1500 even at the 'buy it now' price.
My feeling is there is not anything wrong with the mics, or so it would
seem. Looks legit. In all the MKH mics I bought there was not a single
problem mic.
I'm not sure there are that many flaky buyers in the high end mic
market. There are some that throw in extremely low bids early, but they
are normally not the final high end bidder. That big money keeps a lot
out of the game. And the MKH mics are not the popular ones for small
bands and such like. The few buyers I bid against that I found out about
tended to be more classical or acoustic music of some sort.
We are in a slump of buyers. I've seen lots of the more expensive mics
go begging in the last couple of months. I think that's the case here,
quite a few MKH mics have been up several times before selling. I've
been tempted to comment in the group on this.
The flip side of that is that some of the sellers really need the money,
are typically bailing out of some failed project. But can't quite bring
themselves to set the reserve low enough (often they bought the mic
new). There has been a tendency to set reserves high recently. This is a
fairly common problem with high end mics. I've seen one person trying to
sell a pair of ribbon mics for at least 4 years now, sets his starting
price and reserve so high no one bids.
All you can do is determine a firm price you will buy at and bid that
and hope the reserve is met. And since each round the seller may have
changed the reserve you have to bid each round. Or at least follow it.
You can save a lot of money using ebay, but it does take time.
I have a habit of bidding very late. Don't want to get into bidding
wars. The flip side of that is that typically if I got the bid wrong I
don't have time to rebid. I take one shot.
Note that sellers in this situation do have a tendency to look at the
bids and only lower the reserve as much as the highest bid in previous
rounds. Optimism is a wonderful thing.
I got my two MKH 40's at around $500 each. And that took passing up a
number of them. I'm not sure if any recent sales were lower than that as
I'm not really following the MKH 40 sales. The two MKH 80's ran more,
one at $750, the other at $900 if I remember right. Again, I passed up a
lot of them, I've seen them bid up above $1500. It's very common for
80's the have too high a reserve at first.
There have been several nice deals on MKH-70's recently. I'm still doing
the same search as you, primarily for another MKH-30. I grabbed one of
the 70's recently, and would like to make up a M/S to try with it.
I'm not so sure about pairing a MKH-80 with a MKH-40 for M/S. It would
work, but the pickup pattern of the 80's is out the side, and the MKH-40
out the end. Suspension and so on are different as a result. You'd
definitely have problems coming up with the dual clips, the 80's are
larger diameter. I've not tried the combo as I have a MKH-80 pair which
is set up M/S. And have a MKH-40 paired with a MKH-30, which is a very
compact arrangement. Both models are excellent mics, the 80 especially so.
Walt
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