G3 is a company that I personally would like to associate with.  They have a great website, cool skis, gear and have a backcountry emphasis.  We share a lot in common, really.  I skied on their bindings for years because they were the lightest and made sense for touring.  They weren’t the stiffest though and have some durability issues, so when I started teleing more aggressively I decided it was time to party on.   I still wanted to buy a G3 probe; backcountry gear is their specialty so I went with the ‘industrial series’ thinking it was burly.  Their website markets it as a ‘heavy duty design focusing on offering increased strength and faultless snow penetration’.  I am disappointed with this probe because for one, it is a product you don’t exactly use a lot and it broke on its 3rd use.  Secondly, it is a pretty serious safety issue having a malfunctioning probe.  The sections of aluminum tubing are held together by sheaths of metal and my connection point is somehow stuck up in the middle of the metal tubing.  I was lucky enough to find this out during an avy training class, but without the sheath, it is useless- no connection point=limp probe.  Nobody likes a limp probe.   A second complaint I have is that the aluminum is too soft for the design of a screw-on locking mechanism.  The aluminum strips easily rendering it worthless yet again.  I would be pretty reluctant about using this product again, however I am hoping the newer probes are constructed better.  This probe is a year or two old.  Sorry G3, I want to love you but maybe I need to make more dough first and buy some of your higher end gear.