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2000 Dauntless 14’ 50 hp Mercury 2 stroke

In June my tach died.
Boat sat and wasn’t used till mid August.
At first use I noticed the voltage low on my gauge and wavering when using trim motor.
After an hour of cruising stopped for a 15 min swim call and could not restart warm engine. No cranking. Was able to start with a jump box. After putting a charge on the battery engine starts fine and batt is holding charge. It was new this spring.
Fast forward a few days. I have read through the Sierra technician manual for my motor and thought I had diagnosed as a bad stator. I was only getting a reading of 800 ohms when testing one of the yellow wires to ground. Test procedure indicated I should see on both?
I replaced the stator and am still not showing any charge heading back into the battery.
Now I think it is the rectifier. Rectifier test with meter also indicates bad. Meter is new.
If the rectifier replacement fixes things should I try to return my new stator with 2 mins of run time on it and try to put back the old one?
What is this box with two reset buttons under my console, I cannot figure it out from diagrams.
Any experience with aftermarket vs Orem rectifiers? Price varies wildly from $20 to $200!

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I am familiar with Mercs, and you are correct. the problem is the rectifier. You should have checked that before replacing stator, although the stator could have been problem. Generally, however, when it's a stator, the engine is not running well either.

When a tach dies, with engine still running well, it's almost ALWAYS a rectifier. Along with the tach, the volt gauge will not show charging with the engine underway, which should read 14.2 volts (if engine has regulated charging).

Can't help you on returning the stator. My guess is once installed, it's not resellable, hence not returnable.

I always try to source Mercury/Quicksilver branded parts, but for something like a rectifier, Sierra would be a decent aftermarket replacement.