Guest Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 Anyone buying (music related-)gear stuff from Ali express or other Chinese wholesalers? Experiences, tips/warnings are welcome! Bit the bullet a while ago with a cheap contact mic, 8 inch hangdrum and wireless receivers. The transmitter/receivers work great hooking up gear to sample without using cables. I was pleasantly surprised with the price/quality ratio, as in it is cheap, works and actually shipped from tjChinah. Don't think I'll do 200+ euro's stuff as you'll have to pay taxes, clearance costs at customs for everything above 150,- and stuff is a bitch to return when turning up faulty, but for small stuff I think it is quite good. Got an electric kalimba recently for around 20,- euro's which when amplified is a bit noisy, but nothing processing can't fix. Build quality and acoustic sound is good. There's not that much I can find on cheap knock off synths, only few midi controllers and guitar pedals, but there's so much stuff on there in different stores, surely some hidden gems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 I've bought 3 or 4 cheap pedals and some other stuff (electronic components, enamel tie tacks of body horror naked Homer Simpson) from AliExpress. They're not a wholesaler, though, they're basically like Amazon Marketplace. One thing to watch out for, and I'm still not sure what the deal is, but more than once I've gotten an automated email weeks after placing an order and paying, when it has already shipped and usually after it has actually arrived - saying I need to complete my transaction or my order will be cancelled. Either there's some kind of glitch/oversight with the transaction being completed or sellers deliberately leaving it open and hoping you'll pay twice, but my gut says it's the former. Also, a lot of electronics that are exported from China are illegal for import (cameras are a big one) so if you buy something that costs enough you would want to return it if it didn't work, know that there's a good chance you couldn't. Found that out the hard way when I tried to buy a popular counterfeit of a popular Korean clone of a Go-Pro and actually got a knockoff of the copy of the clone (some googling determine it was the board and firmware of an ancient 240p camera that went for $30 retail all the way back in like 2005, rehoused in the same case as the thing I thought I was buying, and put in identical packaging) but because of Chinese import restrictions I couldn't send it back and only ended up getting half of my $30 refunded. And that was done through Amazon. Never had any issues with anything from AliExpress other than the automated emails I mentioned earlier. For cheap pedals, you can find just about all of the stuff that's on eBay and Amazon for between 50% and 75% of the prices you'd pay on those sites and it's made by the same slave labor either way, so might as well save some cash and not encourage Bezos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 I've been thinking about getting one of those ukulele scale fretless bass things for recording purposes, since they're about half the price you'd pay for the cheapest budget model available in the USA and are probably from the same factory, and I could modify it if I needed to. Not sure if I'd want a solid or hollow body one, though. On one hand the solid body seems more foolproof in terms of not breaking in shipping and not falling apart when the season changes, but every review I've read for the last three years says the hollow ones sound great but the solid ones have some balance issues between the strings because the pickup is designed for the voicing of a hollow body. Also the solid is almost twice the price. Realistically, if I ever do it I'd probably go with the solid body because CNC is CNC and it will probably be just fine, there's a lot more that can go wrong with an acoustic instrument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Member Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 Can't be arsed to write a long ass post, but bought a bunch of cheap stuff, like cables, plugs and adapters, the odd pedal, some led strips and other nonsense. Everything's been a success, delivery time is about a month or so, but for these prices you can't complain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 How are the cables? I was using Monoprice but I've been having some fail after 3-4 years and since they pot all their connections in epoxy I'd have to buy new plugs to repair them. Which is fine, but it also makes me want to find a different source of cheap cables since not being able to repair them if they get intermittent - or even easily figure out which end has the fault - makes them a much worse deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TubularCorporation Posted September 6, 2020 Share Posted September 6, 2020 3 hours ago, plugexpert said: Anyone buying (music related-)gear stuff from Ali express or other Chinese wholesalers? Experiences, tips/warnings are welcome! Bit the bullet a while ago with a cheap contact mic, 8 inch hangdrum and wireless receivers. The transmitter/receivers work great hooking up gear to sample without using cables. I was pleasantly surprised with the price/quality ratio, as in it is cheap, works and actually shipped from tjChinah. Don't think I'll do 200+ euro's stuff as you'll have to pay taxes, clearance costs at customs for everything above 150,- and stuff is a bitch to return when turning up faulty, but for small stuff I think it is quite good. Got an electric kalimba recently for around 20,- euro's which when amplified is a bit noisy, but nothing processing can't fix. Build quality and acoustic sound is good. There's not that much I can find on cheap knock off synths, only few midi controllers and guitar pedals, but there's so much stuff on there in different stores, surely some hidden gems? Only thing I've ever found for off-brand synths is this: And it's $600. EDIT: there are a few versions of this in the $10 range: No indication that the USB does MIDI or anything but if it did that could be useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modey Posted September 7, 2020 Share Posted September 7, 2020 I bought some Kailh low profile mechanical keys on aliexpress today to hopefully mod my Squarp Pyramid, does that count? 17 hours ago, TubularCorporation said: I've been thinking about getting one of those ukulele scale fretless bass things ugh I nearly bought one of those not long ago. I played one in a music store and kinda fell in love with it. At that price it's damn tempting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Member Posted September 8, 2020 Share Posted September 8, 2020 On 9/6/2020 at 9:04 PM, TubularCorporation said: How are the cables? I was using Monoprice but I've been having some fail after 3-4 years and since they pot all their connections in epoxy I'd have to buy new plugs to repair them. Which is fine, but it also makes me want to find a different source of cheap cables since not being able to repair them if they get intermittent - or even easily figure out which end has the fault - makes them a much worse deal. I couldn't really tell you much about the cables, the signal is carried from a to b. Some of them are rather flimsy, and some seem decent, they're mostly plugged in and left alone, so I don't know how much wear and tear they can handle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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