Here's a NYC boy's truth....I think your radio needs to be re-examined by someone other than the local dude you brought it to.There's a real BC lad, full of truth. This is coming from a lad that was born and raised in southwestern Ontario but somehow ended up in the USA. My aunt and cousins all live in Vancouver and Victoria.
To me, no assembly line is perfect and deviations are bound to occur. At least for physical instead of electronic parts, even the cumulative impact of very subtle differences in small components (that may individually all be within required specs) that are built up into a larger assembly can have a surprisingly noticeable impact on the larger component. So much so that the result is an out-of-spec final assembly. At least that's been my experience. But like I said, that's physical stuff. Maybe modern electronic assembly processes are immune from this sort of thing.
SL