Price of the Pt2399's (fake?)

[chromesphere]

I was looking at getting a bulk order of these direct from PTC and have received a price.   Their MOQ is 900 units, and at this quantity you would expect the price to be favourable.  However the price is quite a bit higher then I expected. Without giving too much away let me say this, any seller selling pt2399's under 60c usd I would consider possibly suspicious. I know quantity has an effect on the price of course, but the difference is quite significant compared to a lot of the prices I have researched particularly in the usual harbour for dodgy good being ebay.  There have been rumors of fakes and 'factory 2nds', but im wondering if a lot of the pt2399 woes that everybody has had over the years has come from a rogue manufacturer of these chips, pumping them out on the side (ive heard rumors of a chinese manufacturer doing this, the batch of "UTC" chips that were floating around a few years ago). 

So I guess the point of this post is to get your opinion on the subject and a warning to new builders looking for pt2399's and see them on ebay for less then 20c each, I see no possible way that they could be buying them from PTC that cheaply, there has to be something fishy with those.

[pickdropper]

That certainly makes a lot of sense.

Did the pricing scale significantly with higher quantities?  In the chip buying world, 900 units is a relatively small amount of ICs.  It's unlikely that it would scale down to 20 cents a chip, but I would expect it to lower quite a bit at 10k pieces vs. 900 pieces.

There's also issues you see with overrun stock; this is fairly common in Asia.  Dealer X needs 5k parts but gets significantly better pricing if they buy 10k parts.  So they buy 10k and sell off the excess inventory at reduced cost to third part dealers.  That's probably not what's happening here, but I suppose it's possible.

In the end, it's probably an Occam's Razor scenario: The better parts dealers usually sell these for $2+.  If somebody is selling them for half of that or less, there's probably something funky going on. 

[Jules]

I found out it was worth paying a bit more from reputable dealers for the pt2399 pretty early on in this hobby

[midwayfair]

Smallbear is my benchmark for "probably more expensive but definitely the real part" and theirs have always been $4.

To be honest, the only difference I was able to find was that I never got a dud from them, but I only get them when I'm making a PT2399 pedal for someone else, so I haven't used nearly as many. There are obviously thousands of pedals running around with the Tayda etc. cheap chips. It's actually one of the last active components I WILL buy from Tayda because I figure that even if 66% of them are bad I'm coming out ahead. I don't get them on Ebay, though. That's just too big of a gamble to me for almost any part.

[chromesphere]

Im considering starting a preorder on them, selling them in lots of 10 with a small margin.  900 is a lot, that would take me a long time to get through, but the advantage I guess is that we all end up with 100% confirmed chips from the manufacturer.

Any interest in this sort of thing?

[Ben]

I would be interested Paul, have a few too many PT2399 projects lying around that need populating.

[zombie_rock123]

Lots of 10 fresh from the manufacturer sound like a great idea to me, ive got a collection of eBay ones that are just as likely foxtrot across my desk as they are to repeat a guitar signal so plug and play sounds good!

[Martan]

I would be, depending on cost.

Marty

[midwayfair]

I probably would. There are a couple builds I could replace the chips in, and it would give me a couple leftovers for customer orders.

87 more people to go?

[BrianS]

I'm in for 10.

[Muadzin]

I might be interested too if the price was right. I'm always happy to throw a little business your way for good parts. Might be a little different for a chance other then my usual fair of Russian diodes and SMD trannies.

[slacker775]

I'd be interested if the price is right.  I've gotten mine from all kinds of various places and haven't - knock on wood - had any real issues yet, but it's possible that some of my older builds that were a bit on the 'meh' side were due to bad 2399s. 

[Haberdasher]

I'd probably go in for at least 10

[Timko]

I'm good for 10 or 20.

[micromegas]

In for 10