Quote Originally Posted by gabe View Post
Alex, after careful inspection by all 3 of us, Stephen, Eric and myself of the high res picture you posted, this really looks like calcium build-up to us rather than pitting.
Gabe, you can clearly see the pitting in the high-resolution version (check the areas that are in focus) and I measured some of the pits at between 0.25mm and 0.3mm in depth. All I know about the block is that it was used with tap water and had become completely caked with a hard blue-white substance. The cleaning process that I had to use to remove the substance also stripped all of the dye from the aluminum top (hence the discoloration) but it did not change the condition of the top's internals (i.e. pitting was not caused or furthered by the process, the pitting existed prior to cleaning, and I used the same process on another non-compromised GTX top to verify).

That said, I'm merely pointing out that these tops can corrode and that the plating isn't infallible. Provided that proper care is taken, I don't really see this being an issue for the vast majority of Apogee GTX/Stealth users--as far as I'm concerned, this was just an isolated incident that isn't representative of GTXs, as a whole... but that doesn't mean that its occurrence shouldn't be known (which was my whole point from the outset--to inform, not to panic).

Now, I do still have the block in my possession (it's sitting on my desk) and I may be willing to send it in for you to look at, provided that it is returned to me in a timely manner.

Moving along, BenArcher may be on to something that warrants further investigation.