My dad went thru the whole GER issues in the late 90s I guess it was. Bought one and it broke after a few weeks, sent it back and got it replaced to only break a few weeks later. Called them and now he has the "wrong" size convertor so he sent it back and got the "correct" one. A few weeks later that one broke and he finally thru it under the bench. A year or 2 later he found a fairly local guy that did convertor work. The guy worked for ATI I think at one point and said GER weren't that bad, but they used cheap bearings and that's what would fail. He repaired whatever needed to be done and we ran it for almost a decade before it broke. Had it repaired by the guy again and used it a few more years before we replaced it with a 8" Coan that I got that was busted and our convertor guy fixed.