64 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au
see pilots wearing. As I’d tested or re-
paired hundreds of ‘real’ versions dur-
ing my time at the airline, they have
the benefit of familiarity. They also
possess a certain retro-cool.
But all was not as it seemed; while
the ’phones in the product images were
almost certainly the genuine Bingle
versions, the ones that arrived here
almost certainly weren’t.
They looked similar, but the build-
quality said otherwise. The seller had
also offered to ship the product with-
out retail packaging because the in-
creased size makes postage more ex-
pensive. More likely the product isn’t
genuine and the packaging is non-ex-
istent or a plain white box.
While some sites offer the product
in retail packaging, the cost is usual-
ly higher, perhaps to dissuade buyers.
Not all sellers will be hawking fake
products using this ploy, but due dili-
gence is recommended!
In this case, I chose to get the pack-
aging, just in case I wanted to re-sell
the ’phones at some point and duly
paid more for the privilege. When
the ’phones arrived, the typical yel-
low tape and a single sheet of wafer-
thin bubble-wrap packaging hadn’t
prevented the box from being bashed
in transit to roughly the shape ofintroducing an “Amazon tax”, like in
Australia.
This will add GST and other lo-
cal taxes onto products valued at less
than $1000 purchased from overseas
(products valued $1000 or more are
already heavily taxed), though I’m
not sure how they are going to coerce
Amazon, Bangood or AliExpress into
collecting Kiwi taxes.
I guess that these online sellers will
merely do what they’ve done in other
countries whose über-greedy govern-
ments slap taxes on small overseas
purchases and either stop selling here
altogether or limit what products are
sold here. Excellent!
Going on a shopping spree
In the meantime, I’m buying all I
can. Lots of cheapo modules like Ar-
duinos and accessories, valves, ampli-
fiers, guitar parts, shoes, clothes; you
name it, I’ve bought it!
One of these purchases was a pair
of headphones. The listing on AliEx-
press showcased some Bingle-branded
wired models (with USB and 3.5mm
audio jack connectors) that ticked all
my purchasing boxes.
They look very similar to those (typ-
ically) green ‘aviator’ or military-style
noise-excluding headphones you often
the ’phones inside anyway. Lesson
learned.
While they weren’t the real thing,
they did at least sound quite good and
were reasonably comfortable to wear.
Nonetheless, I had much remorse, as
well as annoyance at myself for fall-
ing for the dodge.
I filed a dispute but only asked for
half the purchase price back. For bet-
ter or worse I had a set of ’phones,
and returning them would have cost
me more than all this was worth – a
fact I’m sure many vendors are well-
aware of. I left feedback accordingly,
leaving no doubt about the authentic-
ity of the product and put it all down
to experience.
I note that these ’phones are no
longer being sold on AliExpress where
once they were all over this site. I won-
der why...
And this was how things remained
until one day the ’phones stopped
working on one side. Actually, the de-
tachable boom mic stopped working
first, almost from day one, but since
I wasn’t using it and had removed it
anyway, I wasn’t too bothered. But
when the right-hand driver sudden-
ly stopped, it was time to roll up my
sleeves and break out the screwdriv-
er set.Time for a repair
Some headphones I’ve worked on in
the past have been a real pain to tear
down, being tightly clipped together
with breakaway plastic tabs. Getting
them open is semi-destructive, and
they have to be glued back together.
Surprisingly, these headphones were
all screwed together, and with stand-
ard fasteners – none of those ridiculous
anti-tamper things to hinder my pro-
gress – so disassembly was a doddle.
The way into the headphones is
typical of most; remove the cushioned
earpads by working around the edge of
the earpad mounts, gently stretching
the material clear. Once off, the screws
holding the mounts are revealed; there
were four on each side to take out.
To make things easier, I removed the
thumbscrew-style height adjusters sit-
ting above each pod (or “can”) and re-
leased them from the headband assem-
bly. The two cans were still connected
by an audio cable, which runs through
the hollow headband padding, but af-
ter removing the stiff metal part of the
headband, I could at least flex every-
thing and work on each side without