I'm not sure if there's not some confusion here .
when you say aperture linkage do you mean the metal aperture lever getting stuck or out of alignment? I have seen that and had it happen once to me - it seems to happen sometimes when changing a big heavy lens like the Sony 70-400 G lenses. But in my case I simply delicately moved it back into alignment with my finger and it hasn't happened since to me
Yes .
It's happened to me once as well .
I had that happen to me once, and I fixed it the same way you did and it was never a problem again.
This happened to my mom twice, with the same camera. She was (at the time) using a Nikon, but it was pre-internet so she did not post about it. Nonetheless, I can confirm that it has happened at least twice and I strongly suspect quite a few more times as well.
Maybe it's time to rethink your aversion to Sigma lenses because times have changed. The worst and least reliable car I ever owned was a Toyota Celica GT that I bought brand new in 1976 and got rid of 3 years later. I would be foolish to let that bad experience influence any buying decision today. In case you wonder the Toyota had the camshaft replaced and left me stranded twice, once when the clutch failed and again when the transmission failed. All that occurred before 50,000 miles.
I'm glad you posted this. Sometimes when people have never heard of something happening then it must not have occurred.
I'm supposed to read every other comment before responding to yours?
I read lens reviews and stayed away from the lenses that had gear stripping or other issues. But the Sigma lenses I have bought based on reading reviews have been good, and the two I mentioned are excellent.
Neither the 300/4 APO Tele Macro or the 400/5.6 APO Tele Macro had gear stripping problems. It was the earlier version of the 400/5.6 which had them, and which I said was inferior in my comment.
I rented 70-200 Sony. My Minolta 80-200 HS 2.8 stayed in my kit bag and I had no desire to go out and buy the Sony after renting it. The Minolta has its quirks but it is an amazing lens and I would recommend it to anyone after a 70-200 type lens for a99 or a99ii.
I have the Sony 70-200 G SSM and the Minolta 80-200 APO and they seem to be comparable in image quality, the APO seems a tiny bit sharper wide open. The 80-200 HS is similar optically to the APO version, but with faster gears.
The HS also has the Minolta "look" of beautiful delicate colour rendering. The bokeh is exquisite too. Incidentally, out of all the SSM lenses, the 70-200 is the most prone to fail apparently due to blown SSM motors. Sony 70-200 G2 is a good lens though by all accounts and potentially more reliable for AF-C tracking.
The good thing there though is that sounds like a fix not requiring parts. When an SSM lens fails usually it needs new parts and its not clear if Sony are keeping (m)any parts available for a-mount lenses
Yes it was stripped down and fixed.
Yes, it's quite a risk buying an expensive used a-mount lens with an SSM motor now as it is a lottery as to whether the motor could be replaced if it fails, which they do, especially when pushing big, heavy lens elements around like in a 70-200, 70-400, 300mm, 400mm etc
There has been at least one case here of someone having the AF motor in their A700 fail. When I looked for that part, I found it was NLA... but the A900 AF motor was available. That could mean that the A900's version is better and hasn't failed much (if at all) in the wild, or it could mean that Sony stocked more replacement motors for A900/A850s. It's been long enough, though, since these models shipped, that I would think replacement parts would be all used up for common failure issues.
