How did this happen (possibly not answerable) and how can I prevent this? I have never cross threaded them and I generally don't ever remove them from the base.
Noticed the pins on the caps were bent while isolating exactly what was broken with my mics. One side doesn't work (turned out to be the electronics in the base the cap screws into. Will be sending them back to Beyer anyway for repair).
I don't think the bent pins are affecting the performance. Both caps work fine when attached to the base that is still working. So in the end maybe it doesn't matter...but one would still think they should be straight.
The only thing I can think of is that the base with the issue is bending them by having the female part these contact being out of alignment. I don't think both were bent before I swapped them with the opposite caps base.