The_Munchmaster Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 What about the prices though? E.g., B&W 685 speakers. Their price £700, UK price £400. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 Agreed, but how would that be any different by the time I paid freight and Thai Customs slapped the dreaded 30% + 7& VAT on the purchase price ? The UK is weird - you have many of the big name speaker manufacturers, but get gouged even worse than Oz on headphones. I have found a couple of bargains on the Pinayas site compared to Oz: Yamaha A-S700 amp - 17k baht - 540 AUD http://www.getprice.com.au/Yamaha-A-S700-Amplifier.htm http://www.avhub.com.au/index.php/Product-Reviews/Hi-Fi/yamaha-a-s700-integrated-amplifier/All-Pages.html KEF Q300 - 19K - and these were already on my shortlist http://www.avaustralia.com.au/products/KEF-Q300-Bookshelf-Speakers-(Pair).html Even in the US, those KEFs are around 600 USD .. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0047K0036/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1336141311&sr=8-1&condition=new There are others, and I'm still working my way through the list - I'm normally wary of 'cheaper than elsewhere' speakers as fakes are rife throughout Asia, but these guys certainly seem legit. Charging 1.65 million for a pair of high-end Canadian speakers isnt something the white van brigade normally lend their talents to: http://piyanas.com/shopping/productdetail.php?cat=127.278&id=2572&lang=th I think I'd rather have a car and a new buffalo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 Forgot to mention that one of the reasons we get reamed here, and you get reamed on headphones, is distributors. The company who paid for the right to distribute Sennheiser in Oz have a captive market - anyone buying Sennheiser online will usually find themselves screwed when they try to ship to an Australian address. There are forwarding companies in the US and elsewhere, but for most people its just a case of gritting one's teeth and paying the local price. The last time I checked Grado headphone prices in the UK, you were at parity with the US - if they paid 199 dollars for a given model, you paid 199 pounds. Insane. In the examples above, I suspect that both Yamaha and KEF manufacture gear in Thailand - KEF probably outsource to an OEM - and that would explain why they can offer that gear at competitive prices. That, or they have an awful lot of people walking through Customs at Swampy with suitcases full of Singaporean stereo. Whatever - I'll take what I can get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 7, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2012 Purely for my own amusement, this from an Indian Audio board, dated Jan 2012: just returned from a week's holiday in thailand. checked out some hifi. good chunk of shops selling hifi is located across two malls close to each other in the heart of bangkok. amarin and paragon. saw shops selling mcintosh, electrocompaniet, sugden, dynaudio, quad, sonus faber, rotel etc. kind of felt that the mark up was high but not sure. but you might want to clarify if interested. there is a shop called 'mr balance' on the 5th floor of pantip plaza which was supposed to sell 2nd hand stuff - but it was closed when i went there Yup - story of my life - finally find some godforsaken shop in the maze that is Pantip to find the place seemingly abandoned. Good luck asking the Thais in the shop on either side of the mystery vendor - its as though they never existed. Might be the competition - why take a chance on that, right ? Pantip is one place where I find the locals to be decidedly unhelpful, and still the only place where a guy has tried to hustle me to buy DVDs depicting illegal activity. A pox on the place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 9, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2012 High end audio Thailand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 11, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 11, 2012 Cornice Electronics Thailand have the C390DD for 94K baht - roughly 3K AUD with our dollar at parity with the USD May 2012. US sticker price is 2600, but dealers will discount that. M51 DAC 65K No Viso 5 on their pages - only Viso 1 iPod dock and some crap about a Viso 'Fun Party'. Looks very gay - do women even turn up to a 'fun party' designed around an iPod dock ?? Oh - its at a Starbucks - count me in .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted May 12, 2012 Report Share Posted May 12, 2012 Cornice Electronics Thailand have the C390DD for 94K baht - roughly 3K AUD with our dollar at parity with the USD May 2012. US sticker price is 2600, but dealers will discount that. M51 DAC 65K No Viso 5 on their pages - only Viso 1 iPod dock and some crap about a Viso 'Fun Party'. Looks very gay - do women even turn up to a 'fun party' designed around an iPod dock ?? Oh - its at a Starbucks - count me in .... Doing a quick google for "Viso 'Fun Party'" gets me this: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Viso+'Fun+Party'&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://www.centralworld.co.th/en/events-activities-detail.aspx?id=496 something you're not telling us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted May 12, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2012 Er, no, nothing at all ... just sorting my happy snaps from my last trip to Patts, is all. Nothing to see here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted May 13, 2012 Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 Who's that hiding behind the camera and in the red shirt? At the next bar so he can have plausible deniability? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horneytorney Posted May 13, 2012 Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 is that a outing, gobbie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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