> I will never understand how the top mic brands can justify such high prices for mic mounts that are prone to breakage (looking at you, Schoeps A20!).
Voltronic, it's an interesting point that you raise. My sense is that the high price of Schoeps' accessories (and also Neumann's) comes from their history as suppliers to the big national broadcasting organizations in Europe. Those organizations had centralized purchasing and/or official lists of the items the studios and stations were supposed to buy, and they preferred to buy their accessories right along with the microphones. If your main focus is on microphone development and manufacturing, you probably can't be as cost-efficient about producing accessories--but you can't afford to sell them at a loss, either.
That limited the potential market for any potential third-party vendors until the "prosumer" and home studio markets developed in the 1970s-80s. Until then, nearly all professional recording equipment was sold to studios. Condenser microphones were fragile and extremely expensive, and hobbyists didn't generally own them. Even in studios, condenser microphones were usually reserved for the most important clients and the senior engineer(s), while for day-to-day recording, dynamic mikes were the rule.
So I think that the historical explanation for the high prices, and the long duration of certain product designs, is based in those purchasing patterns. Even today, you and I--who might buy one pair of capsules after agonizing for months and talking it over with our therapists--are up against the market influence of customers who get authorization to buy 100 or more microphones in a single swoop, and who want the accessories to be part of the same order.
Still, when I think back--König & Meyer has made mike stands since almost forever, and their stands used to be sold by AKG, Beyer, Neumann and other companies as if they were original products of those companies ("OEM" arrangements). The stands were well-designed, made of good materials, lasted for years in heavy use, and reasonably priced. Maybe if a similar, independent manufacturer of shock mounts, stand adapters, etc., had existed, they could have done a similar type of OEM business, and prices would then have been lower. But I'm not aware of any company that ever did so (other than, to a small extent, Schoeps themselves--who sometimes made accessories for both Neumann and Sennheiser back when those were separate, competing companies).
--The present-day A 20 was actually introduced as a more robust type of shock mount than what Schoeps had made in the past (see attached photos from the 1965 catalog; I used to have some of these; the sleeves surrounding the microphone body were thin metal). Their design was patented, and I think Dr. Schoeps felt rather proud of them. But Jerry Bruck complained about them and actually had the nerve to demonstrate the problem by stepping on one and breaking it in front of Dr. Schoeps--who was taken aback, but he got the point, and the present form of the A 20 (and related models) was then designed.
Since then, the inner part (the actual "clamp") has been replaced with a newer type of plastic that is much harder to break and that doesn't risk scratching a Nextel finish nearly as much. The plastic "foot" (the only part on any of mine that has ever broken) has also been replaced with metal.
But no doubt in my opinion, Rycote InVision shock mounts are preferable nowadays. And in more recent years Schoeps has partnered with not only Rycote but also Cinela and Osix to develop custom shock mounts for their newer products. There is no Schoeps-specific shock mount for the MiniCMIT, the V 4 or the CMC 1, for example; it's all third-party. That is a definite change in policy since the current generation of company leadership (Helmut Wittek and Karin Fléing) took over. Before, it was "build it in-house at all costs"--sometimes literally, unfortunately.
--best regards