The Hungarian Fakes More than 30 years ago a Hungarian manufacturer purchased several hundred capsules via the Austrian SCHOEPS dealer. At that time, SCHOEPS was told that this manufacturer wanted to equip their own product with SCHOEPS capsules. What really occurred and was not realized until the fall of the Iron Curtain, was that this manufacturer created counterfeit M 221 microphones. They even forged the SCHOEPS logo on some models! Once the Hungarian market became part of the worldwide market these counterfeit "SCHOEPS" M 221's have been offered for sale and many have been sold to American customers who believed they were purchasing genuine SCHOEPS microphones. We are sorry to say that this is an error without exception. These microphones may work but in all cases that we have been able to test, they did not reach original specifications. The units we have tested exhibit considerably more THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) than do the SCHOEPS versions. In addition, these fakes are of extremely poor mechanical quality and the output transformers that they use are lacking in tolerances and performance equal to the SCHOEPS originals. Here you find an example showing the typical view of a "M 221" fake. _____________________________ Close this window