Yeah and SD wont touch it. Gotta go through Shure... Who probably has to send them to SD anyway.
John, I have a ghetto fix for it...
I ran outta alky AA's and only had rechargeables, and I figured out what the deal is with the spring.
If you look at the spring in the battery comparment you can see the end or last turn is very open. What happens is the alky batt doesnt actually make contact at the tip, but around the tip. Rechargeables are covered there so no contact. In a pinch I took a small piece of tinfoil and make a piece round bout the size of a washer. stuck it in, the the rechargeables and was in business. I will prolly send mine in for the mod, but I know you are in a different situation... you might wanna look for a small washer that would fit in there to make the connection, that or add another smaller spring maybe... And if ya blow anything up, it wasn't my idea!
(on a side note: I did look to make sure that I couldn't short anything out, and if you look at the neg side (the part that screws into the mixpre) it only goes down bout 1/2 the length of a single aa, so unless you stuck a HUGE wad of foil, (the size of a AA and a half!) you will be fine.)