I've had the same H4N for years and it's servered me well. I've dropped it a few times in the dark at gigs and have busted the external stereo mics a few times and simply glued them back as it seemed that they both still worked. Plus I mostly use the XLR inputs using four channel mode and turn the mics not used to no record level.

The last gig I recorded would not allow me to feed off the mic out XLR off the board so I placed the H4n on a mic stand and dialed it in with headphones. I had it set to stereo which is just the two onboard mics. It was electric music but not super load rock n roll. The record levels from the two stereo mics kept peeking and I kept lowering the recording level to try to get the peaks at -12. Of course the headphone volume I'm never sure what to set it to since it's already hard to tell what's coming over the headphones (over the ear) and the actual music. The resultant wav file came out very low volume.

I'm very suspicious if the weird dial in was due to the stereo mics possibly actually being more than cosmetically damaged and thus causing this impossible dial in.

I'm about to go an buy another H4N today and wondered if anyone else had had problems with the external mics for live recording....especially after they may have been damaged.

Did you have any internal compressor settings activated on the H4n? That might have helped when recording in a loud environment by reducing the peaks and allowing the overall level to come up.

Not that I intentionally set - like limiters? I'm not an audio expert.

I'm in the UK but was just browsing Says and spotted this. H4n $149
Zoom | H4n Handy Portable Digital Recorder - Open Box* | ZH4NO (http://www.samys.com/p/Audio-Recording-Devices/ZH4NO/H4n-Handy-Portable-Digital-Recorder---Open-Box*/98909.html)

You guys are spoiled in USA.