OktavaUSA an authorized dealer?

M

MeAgain

Carbonite Member
Hey, I've been fishing around for genuine Oktavas either used or whatever, and stumbled upon this ebay seller:

http://myworld.ebay.com/oktavausa/

Are they ACTUALLY linked to Oktava? I checked their website, and they do not mention the Sound Room as an authorized dealer, so I was thinking it's a bit fishy. I know OktavaUSA is the US distributor, and I know it's recommended to buy from Sound Room but that eBay site have a capsule deal I'd like to snatch up, if it's safe. Can anyone vouch?
 
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My impression is that both the Sound Room (www.oktava.com) and OktavaUSA (www.oktavausa.com) are vendors of the genuine Russian product. I don't think that Oktava actually has an official and formal "dealer network" managed by the source company in Russia. The dealer network seems to have grown up on its own. Perhaps a result of the source company having evolved under hard-line Communism and not as savvy about such things as free-market dealer networks.

Dealing with ANY eBay seller moves you one step farther away, at least IMHO, as there doesn't seem to be any 100% reliable way of telling if people are who they say they are. But that is not to say that I don't buy things from eBay vendors anyway when the risk/benefit ratio is favorable.
 
I asked this question in news:rec.audio.pro and received this information from Scott Dorsey there who is as close to being the ultimate Oktava authority as anyone I know. Here is my summary, but you can read the original in the newsgroup.

OktavaUSA is the official distributor in North America, and Oktava-Online is the official distributor in Europe. The SoundRoom is not an "official" distributor, but they were the original reliable and competent importer before any of the others were around. All three sell reliable, genuine, technically competent Oktava product from the Tula, Russia factory.

The Chinese clones may not be in production anymore since the problematic distributor (McKay) is finally out of the picture. However there are still many inferior Chinese knockoffs and sub-standard Tula product out there in the used market, so be careful of used goods.
 
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