Fake transistors from eBay

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So I got these to have the Bryston with the same transistors on both sides
8 Pairs | MJ21193 + MJ21194 PNP + NPN Silicon Power Transistor Original MOTOROLA 348643461001 | eBay
Only to find they were fake. there is a small piece of silicon inside, much different to the authentic ones. I had sparks, fire, nastiness all over. Hopefully the boards are repairable. Buyers beware.
Seller did refund, he might have been scammed when sourcing parts as well, just source your parts from reputable sources.
 

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I am amazed that you expected anything else. :confused:

The seller is not innocent, *everybody* in this business knows those fakes on sight, no need to open them, by the double thickness iron base, a poor attempt at "improving" heat conduction since they do not use the copper "coin" you see on the original.

The small transistor die is soldered straight to it, and typically covered with a drop of white epoxy.
They skimped even on that, usual is a "white lentil" which fully covers the die.

s-l400.jpg


And where did HE get them from?

No Motorola labelled transistors in the market for a decade or two.

EDIT:and high seller ratings mean NOTHING on EBay:
Seller : activeparts (22462 )
99.8% Positive feedback
Get fast shipping and excellent service from eBay Top-rated sellers.
 
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Motorola also had their own part numbers for their active components and you needed their conversion code book to replace many of them.


This is still causing problems on many electronic repair websites .


I remember a Quad 303 I had had some installed luckily enough Quad supplied the actual standard codes as well.
 
And this is the underlying business plan:
Two farmers met at the crossroad. After the standard opening conversation...
"Last night I bought a cow on e-bay"
"On e-bay, so what?"
"costs my 20 euros, a real bargain"
"Oh, that is incredible"
2 weeks later, same scenery
"Any news from your new cow"
"It was dead on arrival"
"Ooops, then this was no bargain at all"
"We'll see, I have some plan..."
4 weeks later, same scenery
"So what's about you plan?"
"I started an on-line tombala to sell the cow, each ticket 1 Euro"
"Hmm"
"Sold 500 tickets"
"So you earned 500 Euros! But the winner?"
"Yes. I sent him the dead cow"
"So this could not work!"
"Why not? He complained and I returned his money.
1 Euro"
-> 100% satisfied customers
 
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I bought few times components from semitronus, US saller, high rate - looks like decent seller. I bought 2SJ200 and 2SK1529 - they looked OK, laser marking, font looks the same as Toshiga - and put them aside for a future project.
Then I bought LM4562 that I planned to use in DAC I/V - my friend used them with big success. I put them - but the sound was not so good, we measured DAC with QA401,
with different opamps - and these LM4562 behaves like cheap NE5534, replacing with one purchased in DigiKey solved the problem.
I decided to check MOSFETs that I talked at the beginning of the post - Atlas detects them as BJTs! (Original that I purchased many years ago were detected OK).
2 PAIRS 2SJ200 + 2SK1529 P-Channel MOS Transistor | eBay
I bought then a long time ago, so could not make any claim.
So, beware this seller, his components looks really very similiar to genuine, but could be fake!
 
That would make sense as I knew Motorola as a company that had its own special coded active devices so seeing standard inscriptions on the components made me post as in post #3 .


As you say Craig ON Semiconductor bought up the semiconductor division but so did NXP semiconductors (Dutch ) .
 
Because NXP bought part of Motorola which was (a division ) of Motorola called Freescale Semiconductors Inc created by the divestiture of the semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola which merged into NXP Semiconductors .


So the original statement of only one company involved in the Motorola semiconductor buy -off is wrong.
 
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Joined 2010
So I got these to have the Bryston with the same transistors on both sides
8 Pairs | MJ21193 + MJ21194 PNP + NPN Silicon Power Transistor Original MOTOROLA 348643461001 | eBay
Only to find they were fake. there is a small piece of silicon inside, much different to the authentic ones. I had sparks, fire, nastiness all over. Hopefully the boards are repairable. Buyers beware.
Seller did refund, he might have been scammed when sourcing parts as well, just source your parts from reputable sources.
What a coincidence! I had this exact experience 17 years ago with fixing a Bryston 2x 300w amplifier with integrated mixer used by some local musicians on stage .I bought the fake ones first which were very cheap, then , after a month or so i had to buy the originals ON semiconductor version for 5 times more money...
 
Oh dear. Never, ever buy semiconductors off eBay. There are dozens of stories like this on the forum. Luckily you can get your money back.

Buy off Mouser, Digikey, RS, Reichelt etc.

If the part is obsolete, get an equivalent.

I don't argue that but there are plenty of honest sellers on ebay , buyers just have to do more researches, if deals are too good to be true...don't fall for those and buy locally.
I do sell a lot of things on ebay , but their policy about the buyer is always right is not correct.
These are my transistors , bought from mouser/digikey a while back.
 

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I am amazed that you expected anything else. :confused:
Same here in this day and age it still amazes me that people hope to get genuine popular audio parts of ebay for a fraction of the cost of the 1k price and out of production for a decade.
I am amazed that you expected anything else. :confused:
EDIT:and high seller ratings mean NOTHING on EBay:
It still have some use :) For a sellers with sales numbers over 4 digits it is meaningful only in that last 1% from 99% to a 100%. I'm skipping sellers with feedback scores less than 99.3%. 98% and less means stay away at all costs :) If seller have lower feedback score and just couple of hundred sales, then I may look at the negatives to decide if it worth trying to buy from it (two thirds of the time it is not). But most of the time if the seller is from China, components will be fake with almost 100% certainty despite what rating seller has.
Also beware of components sellers pretending to be from US. I purchased once some MJL's from the seller with location listed somewhere in US but the shipment arrived late and by China Post :) Personal sales are quite different but that is entirely another story
 
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