Hi everyone,
I just bought a pair of S4's on the internet and while the price was low ($49 ) it was not that low (Amazon is selling them today for $55). I can't tell if they are fake. They came in a blue box, the tin had the alignment between the logo and the h that elsewhere on this site is taken as indicating a fake, the Klipsch name on the side is resistant to rubbing, they came with 4 rubber buds and a cleaning tool, and to my inexperienced ear they sound OK. I have very little experience with earbuds and so can't tell if they are genuine. I asked Klipsch directly and got the standard "We are looking into it" and "we can't tell you how to tell the genuine S4's from the fake ones, you might be a counterfeiterlooking for hints, so go and pay full price at our friends, the authorised dealers, just to be sure they are real" response. You would think that they could tell us at least what previous rounds of fakes got wrong even if they keep the current errors under their hat. This would be some REAL help to people who are trying to be Klipsch customers rather than keeping the margins up for the authorised sellers. So, a question to ask is, While the alignment of the Klispch logo and the h is found on fake tins, is it also found on real tins? That is, is it simply manufacturing variation that has been copied by the counterfeiters. We have two problems here. Accepting fakes as genuine and rejecting genuine S4's as fakes simply because the deal seems to good, My deal was good ($49 vs Amazon's $55) but was it too good? Am I hearing klispch sound quality or not? Right now, the Klipsch brand is suffering because I, and presumably many others, can't answer the question - Is this really Klipsch sound?
John Walker