Extreme Snake Oil

[Dismayed]

I'm surprised that this thread is only 100 pages long!

 

[pablolie]

I'm thinking the same thing. This product has to be an elaborate joke of some kind?

In transport technology, you do use "repeaters" where the signal travels a distance that starts to degrade it - so you have a repeated that cleans up the signal and amps it up a little to restore the original.

But the device above tries to do a repeater's job where it is not required at all. It is a joke.

 

[fpitas]

I'm thinking the same thing. This product has to be an elaborate joke of some kind?

The fact we can't tell if it's a joke says a lot about the audio marketplace

 

[GShepard]

View attachment 257358View attachment 257360

 

[GShepard]

Ignore that empty post above. My comment was that top photo looked like a real snake that I owned. A 7ft Eastern indigo snake I named Voldemort.

 

[Bernard23]

This isn't so much snake oil, more a deception of a generation, and killed off an entire market for honest products. People of a certain age in the UK will understand this, and the trauma of having owned one. My parents bought a TS40 from a catalogue in 1980, and it was shockingly bad. This clip tells you all you need to know about the greatest consumer audio scam ever conducted.....

 

[Count Arthur]

This isn't so much snake oil, more a deception of a generation, and killed off an entire market for honest products. People of a certain age in the UK will understand this, and the trauma of having owned one. My parents bought a TS40 from a catalogue in 1980, and it was shockingly bad. This clip tells you all you need to know about the greatest consumer audio scam ever conducted.....

I linked to that video earlier in the thread. I remember those super cheap low quality systems. They were made to look like a stack of separate components, tuner, amp, cassette deck etc., but were in fact a single box, often containing a single, poor quality PCB for all the "components", they took the inside of a cheap ghetto blaster, put it in bigger box and slapped a really cheap, plastic turntable on top, or in this case the bottom.

The same sort of thing is still going on now, where really cheap, low quality, products are made to mimic far better and more expensive items.

Walk into any Halfords or Argos in the UK, or WalMart in the US and you'll likely be able to find a bicycle for under 200 pounds or dollars, sometimes under 100. To the uninitiated, they look like bicycles costing 5 or 10 times the price, but they are heavy and so poorly made and assembled using really low quality components, that they very unpleasant to use, short lived and almost impossible to set up and maintain. Cyclists often refer to them as BSOs - Bicycle Shaped Objects, they look like bicycles, but aren't the real thing. I once saw an article that suggested that they buy container loads of them from China for as little as $8.00 a unit.

The tragedy is, people buy them, use them a couple of times, have a bad experience and are put off cycling, sometimes forever, then leave them to rot at the back of the garage where they quickly corrode into an unusable lump with flat tyres. They have no value to a regular bicycle user in the first place, let alone used, so they invariably end up scrapped or in land fill after one or two uses.

Anyway, that's my little pet peave and a rant.

 

[antcollinet]

Cyclists often refer to them as BSOs - Bicycle Shaped Objects, they look like bicycles, but aren't the real thing.

See also:

"Constructed from chrome plated cheese."

 

[Bernard23]

I linked to that video earlier in the thread. I remember those super cheap low quality systems. They were made to look like a stack of separate components, tuner, amp, cassette deck etc., but were in fact a single box, often containing a single, poor quality PCB for all the "components", they took the inside of a cheap ghetto blaster, put it in bigger box and slapped a really cheap, plastic turntable on top, or in this case the bottom.

The same sort of thing is still going on now, where really cheap, low quality, products are made to mimic far better and more expensive items.

Walk into any Halfords or Argos in the UK, or WalMart in the US and you'll likely be able to find a bicycle for under 200 pounds or dollars, sometimes under 100. To the uninitiated, they look like bicycles costing 5 or 10 times the price, but they are heavy and so poorly made and assembled using really low quality components, that they very unpleasant to use, short lived and almost impossible to set up and maintain. Cyclists often refer to them as BSOs - Bicycle Shaped Objects, they look like bicycles, but aren't the real thing. I once saw an article that suggested that they buy container loads of them from China for as little as $8.00 a unit.

The tragedy is, people buy them, use them a couple of times, have a bad experience and are put off cycling, sometimes forever, then leave them to rot at the back of the garage where they quickly corrode into an unusable lump with flat tyres. They have no value to a regular bicycle user in the first place, let alone used, so they invariably end up scrapped or in land fill after one or two uses.

Anyway, that's my little pet peave and a rant.

Ah, I thought I'd seen it before in a forum, apologies for plagiarism, but it's such a shocking pile of cr4p that the world needs the history lesson. Sadly, he (Sugar) has come to represent the chronic short sighted pile it high and sell it cheap mentality of the British economy, particularly in manufacturing. Concorde started out as a 50/50 venture bwteen the UK and France, today Airbus is mostly the biggest plane manufacturer , whilst the UK is lucky it gets to make some of the wings.....

 

[Count Arthur]

See also:

"Constructed from chrome plated cheese."

Ah yes, as someone that regularly rides a bicycle, I sometimes get asked to "fix" them for friends and relatives. The metal and fasteners used on some BSOs is such low quality and so corrosion prone, that going anywhere near it with an allen/hex key or screwdriver will invariably round out the hole, or strip the thread. It makes me wonder how they actually assemble them in the first place.

Once things were pretty much standardised, sometime in the 70s?, well made and maintained bicycles became practically immortal. I have a couple of 90s rigid steel MTBs, that ride as well as they did the day they were made; arguably better, as I have fitted improved brakes and tyres.

Well made bicycles, all stainless fasteners and absolutely no plastic clips or self tapping screws, designed for quick cheap assembly, but not for maintanance or servicing, make the engineering on most "luxury" cars look like utter garbage.

 

[Killingbeans]

Walk into any Halfords or Argos in the UK, or WalMart in the US and you'll likely be able to find a bicycle for under 200 pounds or dollars, sometimes under 100. To the uninitiated, they look like bicycles costing 5 or 10 times the price, but they are heavy and so poorly made and assembled using really low quality components, that they very unpleasant to use, short lived and almost impossible to set up and maintain. Cyclists often refer to them as BSOs - Bicycle Shaped Objects, they look like bicycles, but aren't the real thing. I once saw an article that suggested that they buy container loads of them from China for as little as $8.00 a unit.

The tragedy is, people buy them, use them a couple of times, have a bad experience and are put off cycling, sometimes forever, then leave them to rot at the back of the garage where they quickly corrode into an unusable lump with flat tyres. They have no value to a regular bicycle user in the first place, let alone used, so they invariably end up scrapped or in land fill after one or two uses.

Made me think of China's "shared bicycle" clusterF¤¤k:

 

[Count Arthur]

Made me think of China's "shared bicycle" clusterF¤¤k:

I remember reading an article about it a while back; such an incredible waste of time, energy and resources.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

Intriguing that they decided not to sell nuts.
Keith

But they do sell too nuts.

 

[Somafunk]

Walk into any Halfords or Argos in the UK, or WalMart in the US and you'll likely be able to find a bicycle for under 200 pounds or dollars.

The absolute bane of my life, till I refused all work on them.
I’ve been riding/racing mtbs and road bikes since 1990ish (no more due to spms) and one of my pet hates in my small town of a couple thousand folk was attempting to setup/repair their cheap bikes, I was the bike guy, the gear whisperer etc who was always on a bike therefore I could resurrect anything on two wheels. Unfortunately that is not the case with cheap catalogue bikes with plastic brake levers, gears that will never work, headsets that are loose in the frame, full suspension on a £150 kid’s bike that weighs 50lbs .

I lost the will to live after a neighbour bought all his 3 kids new bikes for Xmas and delivered them in boxes for me to build up, he was genuinely impressed with how much bike he could buy for £150 front and rear suspension with disc brakes and 27 gears, but suspension didn’t work as the rear shock was just for show as it hit the frame and there was zero possible movement, brakes could not be made to work as the levers were bendy plastic and the pads simply fell out of the calliper, gears did not work and could never work as the front mech had no possible adjustment due to frame design and the rear mech only had adjustment for a 6 gear spread and no b-tension screw, tyres didn’t fit as they would not sit on the bead of the rims as the rims had no bead lip to secure them never mind that the tyres were not round, there was so much wrong with them and impossible to correct that I just made sure the tyres were inflated and handed them back with a few choice words.

I built them up as best I could but within a couple of weeks the bikes lay abandoned and rusting in his garden, broken and totally seized up.

 

[Purité Audio]

But they do sell too nuts.

Sadly it seems the bolts are no longer available, the one product from Reeki Audio I was interested in, just typical.
Keith

 

[Count Arthur]

The absolute bane of my life, till I refused all work on them.
I’ve been riding/racing mtbs and road bikes since 1990ish (no more due to spms) and one of my pet hates in my small town of a couple thousand folk was attempting to setup/repair their cheap bikes, I was the bike guy, the gear whisperer etc who was always on a bike therefore I could resurrect anything on two wheels. Unfortunately that is not the case with cheap catalogue bikes with plastic brake levers, gears that will never work, headsets that are loose in the frame, full suspension on a £150 kid’s bike that weighs 50lbs .

I lost the will to live after a neighbour bought all his 3 kids new bikes for Xmas and delivered them in boxes for me to build up, he was genuinely impressed with how much bike he could buy for £150 front and rear suspension with disc brakes and 27 gears, but suspension didn’t work as the rear shock was just for show as it hit the frame and there was zero possible movement, brakes could not be made to work as the levers were bendy plastic and the pads simply fell out of the calliper, gears did not work and could never work as the front mech had no possible adjustment due to frame design and the rear mech only had adjustment for a 6 gear spread and no b-tension screw, tyres didn’t fit as they would not sit on the bead of the rims as the rims had no bead lip to secure them never mind that the tyres were not round, there was so much wrong with them and impossible to correct that I just made sure the tyres were inflated and handed them back with a few choice words.

I built them up as best I could but within a couple of weeks the bikes lay abandoned and rusting in his garden, broken and totally seized up.

I wish there were some legislation against selling this sub-standard crap, it's so wasteful and because they exist, most people will never try something better and know the pleasure of riding a half decent bicycle that actually works.

The Raleigh Choppers and Grifters that were around when I was growing up, weren't super quality, and where quite heavy, but they would take a fair amont of abuse and last more than few months.

My current "shopper":

I bought it used, but new it would have around £900.00 and even at that price it was assembled poorly. The front wheel bearings were way too tight, such that left as they were they would have worn out very quickly. I've pretty much had it to bits and re-assembled it with grease, because everything was bone dry, and adjusted things properly, like bearings and belt tension, so that it might last more than six months.

I've never had hub gears or belt drive before and now it's all set up properly, it's great, really silent and smooth; the only thing that throws me off, even after having it for several months, is that the trigger shifter works the opposite way around to all the derrailleur gears I've had.

 

[TankTop]

Saw this on another forum, absolutely hilarious

 

[mhardy6647]

Saw this on another forum, absolutely hilarious

I just need to know whether they work!

 

[AdamG]

That, is a wooden foot roller.

View attachment 264932

Wow, multi-purpose. What a deal! You can feel the improvement in your toes!

 

[bkatbamna]

Saw this on another forum, absolutely hilarious

The maker is probably kicking himself for not pricing them at 2k each instead of 2k for 8. Then you could offer 4 for 6k or 5 for 8k.