...... Companies like Yamaha, Hohner, Fender, etc. use Chinese factories (or Indonesian, etc.), and sometimes are quiet enough about it that it borders on fraud, but the other variable here is that Yamaha may be able to exert enough control over Chinese manufacture that it's different than having a Chinese instrument stenciled with their name.
Yamaha doesn't outsource to other factories, they have their own factory in China and Indonesia and, to my knowledge, is the only company in the business, actually stamping instruments with made in China or Indonesia if that's here they were made even if the law doesn't require them to do so.
What I was advocating is a compulsory system that tells the consumer where any musical instrument (among other things) is made and by which company in which plant.
But even this will strand if the legal definition of " made" is equal to the definition of " assembled' with components bought somewhere else.
Se the all too controversial discussion on the new Selmer SeleS line!
http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?213298-Selmer-launch-new-brand-SeleS
When I go to the supermarket, often, there are, side by side, two similar products looking the same, in the same jar or tin.
I have been in the food industry long enough to know that often times they are the same. If the label tells me who made it and where I might opt for the cheaper of the two.
But this has nothing to do with the issue that you seem to want to pursue and that is the multi-faceted argument of the global economy.
These days in countries like the US the chance that you can actually buy a non Foreign made product is scarce.
For the most part I would say almost impossible if you look at what kind of components are used in the production and even if you found something " Made in Usa" from top to bottom, could you be sure that the shareholders of the companies are not Foreigners?
Autarchy, whatever you think of it, is a thing of the past.
Globalisation has happened and not without our participation.
We all contributed to it by buying the things that were offered to us and by, even only passively, embracing the ideology of the economical system in which we live.
Maybe the sellers imposed it to us but ultimately we went for it.
But again this is another thread and one who would rapidly get closed because can only go into politics.
So to the point of this thread.
I know, for sure, that there are importer of musical instruments who don't do anything to the imported instruments and simply flip them as they are and in some cases have the maker ship directly from China or Taiwan to the customer where he might be.
There are others ( mostly the makers in China) who comically pretend that their companies produce with the help or French technicians or American technicians.
Then there are a number of companies which say they do things to the instruments, by them assembled outside the production countries, saxophones obviously implying they do things of great value because these saxophones always cost a LOT more than the ones which don't say anything about assembling and where.
In these many years I have asked many times people who say they designed a saxophone to show the " design" and people who say they assemble to show the assembling. I have yet to be satisfied by ANYONE!
There was the case of a Belgian person who said he had a company doing all of this, I offered to go there visit the premises and make pictures of the whole process. He shut his business (and reopened it somewhere else!)
http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?77467-Schille-saxophones-(Brussels)
So, back to this mouthpiece.
I have no idea of where is it made, what do they do to it. It might be a pure Chinese mouthpiece with a name other than the real maker scratched on it, it might be a heavily modified blank. I don't know.
Like many things ion life nobody forces me to buy it and I agree, it is a lot of money if this simply is simply flipped.
However, as things currently stand, it is not illegal to sell a rebranded product of any type!
IF however the law would make it compulsory and would actually give stringent definitions on the criteria of " Made or Assembled" we might actually know a bit more about what we are buying.
Hence my previous reference to labeling.
Would this prevent people to find a way to sell us something cheap for a lot of money. NO, but it would make it at least more complicated.
In the end, the best policy if one objects to all of this is NOT buying, which is something I urge anybody to do if this is what they think it is happening here.