Here's some useless information: In my prior life I was a QA and manufacturing engineer for a laboratory equipment company, eventually writing ISO standards for such. My work involved lots of hands-on work with several French manufacturers over a decade. trying to teach these iconoclastic engineers and political managers to implement good QA into their production was nearly impossible. White collar and blue collar do NOT mix well in southern European technical manufacturing. I'm a french engineer, yet I must state that trying to get consistent production of clones in a country of 400+ cheeses was impossible. If you opened up a dozen Capitoles I would be surprised if you'd find two that were wired or configured identically! Hence the variability in performance and reliability....
It may be the rare case that AA DOES operate with more stability and control, so my apologies if they fall into that camp. Hell, even my Norwegian CDP's production has evolved (?) through various iterations, such that modding it is less than straightforward due to variability across a manufacturing run. I'm glad I gave up on that career. Companies now brag about ISO 9001/2 compliance, although it's just a documentation paper trail scheme without real assurance teeth....
Just hope you got a good one!
