[simplechamp]

What were the circumstances of the failure? How did it happen?

For the price and specs I think you'll have a hard time finding anything better than the CC BEC. There's the CC BEC Pro, but the regular CC BEC should be plenty capable of handling that servo (as long as it's functioning properly), and you said you aren't keen on spending $40+ on a BEC.

Have you been able to test the servo since the BEC fried? Possible the servo is at fault? If you know the servo is functioning properly I'd have to chalk it up to a random fluke failure of some component in the BEC.