George Gleason wrote:

I do own "thousnads of neutrik connectors and find them by far the most
reliable easiest to instal and service xlr connector on the market
I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ,discoverd sliced bread when I used
my first neutrik and could finally get away from the IMO much more poorly
designed and vastly more unreliable A3f/m connectors

I don't understand this. What's poorly designed and unreliable about a
Switchcraft A3M/F connector? There's only one free part, and that's the
insert, and it's some soft of glass filled plastic that's really hard
to melt. Everything else else stays together. The various Neutrik
designes I've had in my hands have a strain relief (plastic), a collet
that holds the cable (plastic), an insert (plastic) and the metal
shell. And the insert on at least some models is easy to melt and the
pins get out of alignment. I've done it. And then there's that o-ring
that makes the females hard to plug together with Switchdraft males
unless you remove it, and then they feel a little loose.

Gimme Switchcraft (at least the ones that I have in my stock). Like
computers, though, I'm sure there have been a few changes for the worst
in an attempt to give the buyer the latest cool features, whatever they
might be on an XLR connector.