Let’s not venture into the world of offering advice or interpretation about a pretty clear cut recall … the guidance to cease using it is quite clear. For sure Elektron may realise this is a minuscule percentages thing, but rather than take that risk, they cover your back and cover their own.
Making it a one-size fits all solution is simplest and creates less long term worries. They take all the hit now and move on. We don’t know if this is a unique use-case manifesting issue, or a manufacturing error from a small batch or a rare susceptibility to damage or malfunction, but whatever it is, it’s clearly being taken as a safety-first decision whether it was likely to affect only a few, perhaps under certain conditions. Having ambiguity here with regards to this is not wise if it backfires in one situation, it seems like this would be their only option for all concerned even if some would never have come across any issues.
I had a nosey inside the tube to see how it hangs together and there’s some more complexity to the industrial design (if not the electrical design, which granted is simple) than is apparent externally. But without knowing how and where the short was manifesting none of us can know if it would happen in time, perhaps given certain contributing factors (e.g. not all AA batteries are the same size) or maybe it’s within the flexing cable that the tolerances of manufacture were off and shorting was possible. Indeed it looks conceptually simple and it may well be a victim of its neat design - i’d love to know how the +ve is carried from the right-hand closed end to the ring which the cable ‘pads’ connect with - this all seems well clear of the negative end/spring and the battery sleeve seems to be plastic (The handle itself it not conducting). So it’s a bit of a puzzler for me, but that’s not the point, if it was an easy fix i’d bet they’d still have to do a full recall on safety grounds in case somebody didn’t get the memo. I wish they’d bit the bullet like this when they spotted the low send levels in the AR FX sends, instead of retaining legacy mode to add a bit of confusion thus keeping a few folk happy. If there was a way to separate potentially dodgy devices from others it would still be too high a risk for the user and them to leave that element of doubt, it only takes one accident to take this in a different direction.
It’s a bummer for sure although still a nifty stand/handle, but for the sake of clarity let’s not cloud this with contrary voices unless you know that there’s a safe way to proceed for all owners. If Elektron can’t propose a path then it’s unwise (or dangerous) to suggest to anyone to take that gamble and keep it - this is clearly not advice you can offer without knowledge of the shorting mechanism - whatever it is it’s not obvious so there’s no way to disagree with the intent of the cease to use instruction which is pretty unequivocal.
It’s unambiguous … click through to the recall form (it actually clarifies that it’s a batch manufacturing issue in contrast to my pondering of how it might have manifested)
You can’t argue with that if you don’t know whether the manufacturing issue was marginal in nature, i.e. it could also manifest eventually in currently well performing units. I’ll mark your post with a cautionary note to prevent it being taken as a serious option by anyone browsing quickly