How to spot a FAKE SM57 Microphone (FAKE vs REAL)

I thought I'd struck gold recently when I went to a flea market and found a stall that had guitars and audio things and there was a box marked everything 10 bucks in that box was this sure sm57 microphone which I know normally costs around a hundred bucks brand new but this is not a sure sm57 it's a pretty well constructed fake if I gave you this when you asked me for an sm57 to mic up your guitar cab most people would not take a second look but in this video I'm going to show you just exactly how fake this is and once you see the differences between this and a real sm57 you are hopefully never going to make the same mistake that I made and purchase a fake microphone first thing cosmetic differences just with looking at it for about 10 minutes I found 16 cosmetic differences let's look at them fake on the left real one on the right the grill first the grill on the fake one is silver in color whereas the real one is more dark gray and it has this kind of crater that you can sort of fit your finger in on the real one the fake one is flat straight across very very different one of the biggest tests that you can do on an sm57 microphone is to rotate this plastic bit which on a real one rotates freely and easily and will not break the mic on the fake one it doesn't turn at all in file it does turn but you'll notice and this is how I found out the mic was fake that when you turn it the internal part moves also and that is not the case with a real 57 okay so fake one real one let's look at the piece of plastic in between the sticker and the opening of The Grille that just there is far thicker than it is on a real one kind of hard to show but if I put them side by side maybe like that you can see that it is definitely smaller on the genuine sm57 let's talk about the sticker If I put that alone the sticker doesn't look too bad and generally this mic doesn't look too bad at all but when you put it next to a real one you can see the stickers slightly too big slightly too shiny and the shore logo is very different so it's it just looks better quality on the real Shore and that's because it is better quality there's also a gap just here in the plastic just there on the fake one it doesn't exist because it's not there moving down just here you can kind of see some gold through that Grille just there and you can't see it on the fake one because that gold isn't there or at least the grill is too tight one of those two eventualities and finally the most obvious thing for the Cosmetics of the body is that this real one is dark gray black and the fake one is more sort of bluish Hue more sort of silvery and more shiny so that should be enough already to show you that this one is a fake however there's a dead giveaway when you look at the pins again fake one on the left real one on the right you'll see immediately that this fake has gold pins and the real one has silver pins you might also see if you look a little closer this silver rectangle on the real one is thicker and longer than the silver rectangle just there I think it's some kind of clip inside you'll also see that this fake is entirely flat on the chassis of the mic whereas this one has a kind of groove on the inside and the differences don't stop there so even though this was super convincing at the flea market the more I look at it the more obvious it is not a real sure let's open it up and have a look inside so unscrewing the fake let's put that down just there and let's be a little bit more careful with the real one but I did Rip one of the wires off earlier when testing for this video um you'll see this bolt here is very different from this one in the sense that that one is longer than that one and I have tested this against more than one real 57 and that seems to be uniform also there's a washer here there's no washer there look a little closer we've got a plus sign on this bit of plastic just here there's no plus sign or marking like that on the fake one and this one has some kind of stamp I guess by the person who inspected the mic this one has no such stamp and then looking on the inside of this part there is less goopy stuff on the fake so that goopy stuff holds the transformer in place and I think deals with handling noise or something there's it looks like hot glue and there's not much in there at all whereas this real sure and the other ones I've looked at are almost completely full up to that Transformer with goop now just a little disclaimer the shore sm57 has been around for about 60 years at this point which means that there have obviously been changes in the design and changes in Factory and maybe other changes in those 60 years this I know for a fact is 100 genuine if you have a mic that you believe to be genuine but is slightly different to my 100 genuine one it doesn't mean yours is fake it just means that it might be from a different year or something slightly different that sure did however if yours so far is more like this one than this one you should really get it checked by a professional because the chances are you have a fake on your hands but don't worry there are more differences than just purely cosmetic differences so if you think you might have a fake then continue watching because I'm going to show you other ways to determine which one's the real one okay we're gonna measure them because when I first put this fake into the sure mic holder I noticed that it went in slightly differently from the other one so look at this Gap just here and now look at the real one it barely goes through to the back so that's me pushing it it's stuck there I could push it further but it's stuck there nicely that one with about the same amount of force goes through further so it was clear to me these two mics were definitely not the same so again fake on the left real one on the right let's measure them I think the the real one is thicker than the fake one I'm in millimeters let's zero it come on zero zero there we go now let's do this this top bit that measures at three one four one Thirty one point four one millimeters now I'm going to put that up against the other one it rattles and if I push that in there it's three one point one eight show that to the camera three point three one point zero nine roughly there we go the point is it's smaller if I put that in there and then try to put the real one in there it doesn't fit that is definitely bigger at that point let's try down here so right at the bottom we've got 23.10 and then on the fake one we've got 20 almost exactly 23. 23.01 now I think if you've been playing guitar for long enough and you've played on stages or you've recorded with them or you're a sound engineer you would have held a real sm57 hundreds if not thousands of times so when you put them one in one hand faking this hand real one in that hand I think you'll notice that there is a significant weight difference so this is the fake one that is coming in at 200 grams the real one comes in at 300 grams let's put it in pounds for you Americans that's is that 10 ounces and that is six so the fake is not only smaller than the real one it's also lighter but maybe you're still not convinced maybe you still think that I have a genuine sm57 that I got for 10 bucks that just looks a bit chunky well the obvious thing is to repair it so I'll get the soldering iron out and mic up that amp and find out if it sounds the same as this definitely real sure sm57 I don't think it will but let's find out [Music] did you get it it was about halfway through and the sound suddenly got a lot brighter a lot tinier lost a little bit of bass and also there was a lot of hiss introduced even though I didn't change the gain on the audio interface at all it's exactly the same settings exactly the same mic placements but there was a difference right okay I think it's going to be easier to test with a distortion pedal so let's play a riff through the Magus Pro from TC electronic a rat style pedal this time I'll put a and b on the screen and tell me if a is the real mic or if a is the fake mic [Music] so it's a lot easier when you introduce some gain because the fake this one is losing all of its bottom end and becoming real nasally and nasty and maybe with a bit of different placement of the mic you could get a better sound because this is still a microphone it may be a fake sm57 but it is a functioning mic so if I had to use one of these I probably could get a better sound out of it but it doesn't sound anything like a real sm57 let's put some super high gains through it let's put a riff through this the pentatone from Ibanez which is a beast again for this one A and B will be written on screen and after this sound sample I'll tell you if a is the real one or if a is the fake one [Music] in case you didn't get it Mike a was the real one and Mike B was the fake one the fake one sounds absolutely zero like a real sm57 and I also kind of played a trick on you because when it said mic a on screen I actually switched between two different sm57s during the a sample whenever it was B it was the fake mic but during the a sample I switched out one real 57 for another 57. that's how similar these mics sound to each other and that's how very different this one is did you get all three right are you brave enough to let me know in the comments section go on give it a go it's a safe space here right some buying advice for you there's a pun coming and that's your warning ready if you want to ensure that the sm57 you buy is genuine and not fake then just buy from an official authorized retailer such as the ones in my video description I've linked there for you however if one comes up for sale near you and it's a good price and you want to make sure that it's not fake here are the three things the three minimal things you should be doing to test that mic number one twist that head if that head spins around it indicates a real sure microphone number two it should be weighty there's a fair bit of weight to an sm57 and the fake is one third lighter so a light mic is a good indicator that it's fake and finally those pins in the socket should be silver Not Gold I hope that helped and if it did consider leaving a thumbs up on the video so more people get to see it that's the end of the video which means you've reached the end of the video club and to prove that you are a member of this prestigious Elite when you leave a comment down below telling me or your stories of the sn57 and potential fakes that one please also include the phrase stop selling fakes you fake and that let me know that you watch this part and it's fairly humorous I guess right that is another video from me that is also another video for me and that is the Subscribe button I've asked you to do lots in this video so do at least one of them take it off your list my name's Andy I'll see you in the next one bye-bye

Channel: TheGuitarGeek

Views: 19,260

Keywords: fake sm57 microphone, shure sm57 microphone, fake shure microphones, how to spot a fake sm 57 shure mic, Shure, SM57, microphone, sm57 guitar microphone, theguitargeek, sm 557 guitar demo, sm57 guitar demo, shure microphones, sennheiser e609, fake, guitar, the guitar geek, andy ferris, andy, youtube review, recording guitar, best mic for recording guitar, cheap guitar recording mic, how to record guitar, sennheiser e906, behringer sm57 clone, guitar cab mic, best mic, cheap mic

Id: Wf6TqBIz22s

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023