Other day I purchased a "used-excellent" Shure SM58 on ebay for 65$ from a US seller. That is a good price but not over-the-top for a used very common mic. His feedback for selling others like it was positive, so I gave it a try. Turns out it is a very good looking Chinese counterfeit. The Chinese have been refining their fake Shures, apparently. Lot of the cosmetic dead giveaways on older fakes were not present. The giveaway was inside the mic. In the body of the mic, there is a cavity for the matching trans. that is potted over with hot glue looking translucent stuff. In this particular mic, there was no trans. under the potting, just a wad of paper. The DC resistance of the element was around 600 Ohms, too high for this model. Of course element wired directly to the pins. The XLR jack has the raised Shure mark and numbers, but has gold pins. Seller insists some of his mics are "refurbs" but that it is not a fake. So there is a contention there, but Shure looked at the autopsy photos of the mic and says bogus. The Chi. have put alot of work into making convincing SM57/58 mics for some reason. This seller, besides a denial, said he would refund purchase price if I only return the mic to him first. Should I call down the 'bay on him or just try to cut my losses?

Regardless of whether the seller knew or didn't know about the status of the microphone, he owes you a total refund which includes shipping both ways.

Sounds like he deals a lot with vintage microphones. Seems kind of hard for me to believe that such a fake microphone would go unnoticed by a dealer like him. As long as you have strong evidence, insist on an absolute and full refund with no strings or conditions attached. Leave a feedback stating that he sold you a Chinese copy microphone. He may not appreciate it but you'll be doing others a service. This will also force the seller to be more careful in the future when selling vintage Shure microphones.

Just out of curiosity, could you post some photos of your Shure microphone. It would be interesting to see what a fairly good Chinese copy of a Shure microphone looks like.

Same thing happened to me with a knockoff Sandisk 64Gb thumb drive. Company was offering hundreds of them. Contacted Sandisk and they confirmed it was a fake from China. Got my full refund from the seller and notified the district attorney in his County when I saw he was still selling them to others.

I won't post all the pictures I sent to Shure, but it is a very solid copy. You would have to investigate it to realise something was wrong, probably. Alot of the fakes have a third hole in the body near the plug end. Note the wires going right thru the potting direct to the plug, the transformer replaced with paper in it's cavity in the body. I would assume alot of people blissfully use these without a clue. Whatever feedback I leave, I will wait till I get my money in-hand! He claims he got these mics from a music pro so maybe they both got stiffed, too. Or not.