The other day, one of our customers brought over a pair of Siltech interconnects and asked us if we can burn-in the cable for him. 

"The cable is brand new, and it doesn't sound very good yet", the customer said. 

"Sure", I said.  But the moment I saw the cable, I told the customer; "it's fake". 

"What do you mean it's fake?" said the customer in shock.

After doing some research on the internet, the customer believed that he's got the counterfeit cables.  We also showed the customer a few tricks to revealed the identity of the counterfeit cable.  Luckily, the customer didn't pay too much on the cable, but it was quite embarrassing.  

Rather than having more customers become the victim of counterfeit products, we thought it would be a good idea to have this special audio visit.  Instead of the high end audio we usually visit, this time, we are visiting some of the counterfeit cables.

Fake Cables Discovery 1 - counterfeit Nordost

Nordost's roots were in the Military, Medical and Aerospace industries. It gives the company access to the most advanced materials technologies known to man. Ever since the launch of the first audio products in the early 1990s, Nordost has always insisted on the highest quality, extruded FEP for use in cables' dielectric and jacketing. FEP has many advantages; primarily, it is the most consistent and best performing dielectric material available, with the exception of air; which is where micro mono-filament technology comes in. The micro mono-filament technology is a process developed by Nordost to reduce the effect of the insulation material. It uses a thread of FEP which is helically wound over each highly polished conductor. A precision FEP jacket is then extruded over the thread and the conductor. A number of proprietory methods are used in this difficult and extremely precise manufacturing technique.

Now that we understand the construction of a genuine Nordost cable, it's simply not easy to make.  We can see that counterfeit cables DO NOT have the technology and manufacturing technique, and it is very costly to duplicate the same construction.  Therefore, the counterfeit cable can only duplicate its appearance.

Couple things we can notice on these counterfeit Nordost cables:

• Fake Nordost uses cheap and rubbish rubber /PVC insulator.
• They don't have the manufacturing technique for proper twisting; instead they need an inner wire for the twist.
• They have poor printing; sometimes misspellings.  They also don't have serial number, and often no box.
• They have poor soldering points, and also counterfeit connectors.