SME V Tonearm on eBay Hong Kong Sellers are FAKE!!!


These scumbags have been selling these for a while now. It comes from multiple accounts originating out of Hong Kong. They sell on average two SME V tonearms a month, at $1400-$2200, auction style. Fellow audiophiles, please stop buying these. They are 100% fake. They are cheap hideous copies.

Report and do not buy from sellers: mandy-930 and makiyo2008
invictus005

Showing 2 responses by folkfreak

Other than the rough finish (although hard to tell in the crummy photos, btw out of focus photography is almost always a give away) the big tell is the lack of serif on the “V”

compare with

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F282864554524
@raymonda

This is the fake
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sme-V-Tonearm-With-Denon-DL-103R-Pro-Cartridge-apply-Garrard-Micro-Sata/253...

This is a real SME-V
https://sme.co.uk/audio/product/series-v/
http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/sme-series-v-tonearm

Look at the picture of the mounted fake arm -- look at the V -- see the lack of Serif’s? If you can’t even screen print the font correctly ...

Furthermore look at the "arrows" on the VTF adjuster -- they should actually be arrows/triangle shapes, instead they’re just rectangles ... you need to pay attention to detail! (time validating luxury handbags teaches you this stuff)

and to me the photos in the fake listing are pretty bad - eBay allows very large clear images, these look like they were taken with a phone in a hurry