Are you free to share what the Nagra top-man said was changed, John?
IMO, the misstep was that Nagra was not especially open about the whole thing to begin with, and once folks realized the recorder was based on an Chinese OEM platform they never related to their consumers what non-superficial differences had been specified. With little more than a "trust us" in response, this represented a breach of trust to those who suspected a leveraging of name brand recognition goodwill, as has been unfortunately such a common occurrence with so many other new products from "historically valuable brands" over the recent decades. If that was indeed not the case, it was certainly in Nagras interest to clearly explain why it was not, and what the actual differences were.