Walt wrote:

The Neutriks I've used have tended to fail within months. Now, I just
looked on Neutrik's website and they make 9(!) different models of XLR
cable connectors

They keep changing them. Every trade show I stop by the booth and they
show me the new connector that looks just about like the old connector.
There are indeed, as Arny pointed out, some special ones. There's a new
EMI-shielded one (but they still don't have enough of them to give out
samples).

The last several models have that feindish one-way screw-on strain
relief that you can't get apart. And not even the Neutrik reps at the
show booths really understand it. When I pointed it out to one of them,
he said that in Europe, the engineers didn't think anyone would ever
want to take them apart, but that the US people told them to change
that, so he said that the batch in that series that would be shipping
would be unscrewable.

A year later, I picked up a sample at a show, screwed it together,
tried to unscrew it, and asked the rep what was up. He hadn't heard the
other story and said "Oh, it doesn't do that when you have cable in
it." But it does.

I won't buy them. I'm a Switchcraft man, but I've been told that
Switchcraft has changed the design from the last batch I bought a dozen
years ago that I still have some of.