spritzer

One update on my ailing SR-X1, I went in one last time and coated them again and that seems to have done the trick. No imbalance at all and just some mild buzzing from the driver as some debris got in there. I might go in and try to clean it but yeah... that's the good news. Now for the bad one as I'm afraid the X1's are not long for this world. So this was the first time I took the driver fully apart and whoever designed this needs to go and look at how Stax used to be made. I've never seen them do this before but the diaphragm is only attached to one ring, not sandwiched between two of them. So the spacers they use (also the insulation from the stators) are different from one side to the other. The side with the metal ring is very thin indeed, probably 0.2mm or so. I didn't want to snap a picture as the whole thing is so fragile but yeah, the diaphragm is hanging on 2-2.5mm or so of metal spacer and mine was already lifting off the ring as the PEEK seemingly doesn't adhere well to it. I'm sure I didn't cause this and it is very worrying as they have so small a support for the film. I have some SR-X NB diaphragms here and there they used 4mm spacers and glued on both sides for a much smaller diaphragm. That means the films are still just fine after 50 years in service which I doubt will be case for the X1's. I for one don't see an issue with gluing just one side as I do the same on my DIY drivers, but the contact area has to be bigger and mylar behaves differently to PEEK. Right now this set works fine but I'll continue to monitor it and I'd like to know if anybody else has had these issues. I finally got around to watching this and a few interesting bits, they are clearly still making 009 drivers as they were pulled out of a drawer in the soaking oven even through they are long out of production. Odd that they don't swap them out with 009S drivers as they have done with every other model. I did roll my eyes when only 30 X9000 drivers could be tested by one person... sure... why not I found it interesting that they test the drivers like that, as the reflection off the table is surely messing up the test by loading one side of the driver differently. I always thought they would slot them into jigs with microphones on each side as this way makes no sense to me. Btw. I feel their museum severely lacking... I know a few people who have a lot more Stax stuff in their collection than that.

Thanks for that and more projects in the works. While beating my head against the Fusion360 wall I made the parts needed to finally fix the SR-009 drivers. Once you do a deep dive into them, they are so badly designed it just isn't funny. The stators are impressive but the rest is just thrown together. I need to have some prototypes made for the new cable entry to see if it fits with the new mod parts.

I have both in front of me and they have identical cables. The L500Mk2 has the old cable with the white line (the blue was just on the SR-L300) so that should be pure copper. On that note, I've compared all the cables and there is no difference at all to my ears. They all have the same specs that actually matter (capacitance) so they should all perform the same.

What a steal...

Did the color change on the cables from the first release? My first batch sets (X1, two of them and 007S) have identical cables in every way.

While being stuck home, recovering for the past two weeks, I finally got round to doing some more DIY electrostatic headphones. I wanted to try out some different materials, 2um mylar and Comfort fabric softener to do the resistive coating. I must say both worked well and if the Comfort stuff holds up long term, it is a damn good coating that costs pretty much nothing. First off my long standing test drivers in a Superlux HD330 housing... as I had some donor headphones in stock. I made a few of these but this set has the Stax wide PC-OCC cable and Dekoni Fostex hybrid pads. I've made so many of these drivers over the years that they are a good benchmark and they perform flawlessly. Charge up instantly, no charge migration or issue with humidity that I can detect. The drivers are also modular so easy to assemble and test: I didn't even spring for ENIG on these but yeah, super simple design that just slots into the Supelux housing. They are just a bit on the small side for my head and the partially closed housing has issues but it's a fun set to play with. Next up is a set of SR-5's that had severe imbalance. Time for a new set of diaphragms with the thicker spacers I made 10 years ago or. I simply replace the stock diaphragm and this converts them to Pro bias too. Throw on there an old Lambda cable which had a break at the cable entry and it's a great little set of headphones. I love the SR-X Mk3 drivers and they are fun to play with. It is a bit challenging to fit the thicker spacers into the normal bias housings as it can warp the drivers but not a big deal really. Then I put on some leather earpads from my stash and yeah, a great SR-5 Pro... something Stax really should have sold back in the day. While I was making the diapgragms for those SR-5's, I made a couple of more for a spare set of drivers which resulted in this: I'm always on the lookout for cheap open back headphones which can be "easily" turned into electrostatics. This is a Fiio JT1 which was less than 60$ shipped but is not ideal for the conversion as the baffle is not flat due to how the earpads are mounted. Still nothing a circular saw can't fix: I covered the stock holes with tape to seal the baffle and keep the glue out when I fitted the driver: The PU two part adhesive covers all the baffle vents and I put some tape on the earpad attachment points to just keep the glue out of them. Worked just fine and the seal is great No damping at the back and they are open enough. I fitted strain reliefs at the cable entry and plugs to seal off the top vents in the housing as well. This one has the stock earpads and the cable is the standard silicone 6 core stuff floating around with an aluminum cable splitter for the Y split and a prototype plug I was sent a while back. Pretty nice sounding set of headphones that don't cost a lot to make. Granted you need a SR-X Mk3 to donate the drivers and some custom spacers to make it work but I'd want to make something like this with custom drivers. It would be a great DIY project to release, buy this set of headphones, rip out its guts and make your own drivers from these PCB's. The cable is easy to source, so are the cable entry glands and a Stax plug can be 3D printed with basic XLR housings. Finally, a bit of a closure for me with what is probably the final version of the HD580/600/650 electrostatic conversion above. I was always battling baffle leaks on those as it is impossible to shave the stock baffle completely flat. I might try to laser cut a neoprene gasket or something like that but on this one I simply designed a new protection grill and glued that to the baffle. Not ideal but it works nicely. Then new stators and new spacers for the diaphragms and dust covers. The cable is the King Sound KS-H4 unit so it is removable. I just shaved down the socket a bit and glued it into the stock holes. The protection grill which is glued to the baffle. Earpads are the hybrid units Drop used to sell and then sheepskin headpad. New stators with full ENIG plating and purple solder mask because reasons. :) These do sound great if I dare say so myself, very much on par with the HE60 but with a fuller sound. Same spacing at 0.5mm so sensitivity is very close too to stock Senn units. Funny for me as the HD600 was my first ever high end set of headphones, so when I found this set with broken drivers it was an ideal candidate for conversion. Full circle and all that shit...

No. Given the simple physics that the force of an electrostatic field falls with the square of the distance, it quickly vanishes into background noise before even reaching the skin. An amp like this would never be run at full tilt, not into Stax compatible drivers at least. Well past 120dB so permanent hearing damage until they simply burn up. That means the field is even weaker than that in reality. Ideally you'd never want to run the headphones above say 1200-1400Vppss (which is already crazy loud) as depending on the air parameters around you, is could destroy the headphone drivers. Now there are a lot of variables at play here but a rule of thumb says insulation of air is 3kV/mm and we are running at 0.5mm spacing so 1500V. I go a bit lower as humidity is a huge factor here and the new Stax drivers appear to be anything but stable so I'd err on the side of caution with them. I've noticed some very alarming behavior from the X9000 and the 007S so yeah... Stax will never side with you if you have driver damage.

They are just floating around on the Chinese market, there is no one seller doing this AFAIK. The one I bought for myself and the one I gave to Kevin are not from the same seller and used different Stax plugs. Btw. they all come with 5 pin plugs but should never be plugged into Pro bias, 200V max bias for these.

Yes, it should have no problem with that. The only issue might be gain and bias but easy to solve.

I'm slowly working on replacements but nothing that is ready for release yet. The Dekoni pads are well made but I wouldn't pick those as they are too big and I'd never use fenestrated pads due to the air leaks. You'd ideally want 105mm pads with a fairly large opening and there aren't all that many out there off the shelf.

CRCW's should be just fine so something else might be drifting there.

There were indeed no tubes in the electrostatic output, it was all ultra cheap high voltage opamps. Output power is roughly that of the cheapest Stax amp with worse quality.

Given that Woo Audio makes nothing but utter trash... odds are that this one is even worse than the old one. There are no specifics though but this one might actually be a tube amp...

What resistors are people using on this? I did it all through hole so 50ppm but I've never had real drift issues with 1206 and 2010 parts before.

This has to be the week of stupid mods, cue this 727 in for full surgery and mods. Nothing abnormal on top but below I find this: Hmmm not quite stock that input wiring In and output wires from the volume pot were simply cut and this new monstrosity was sliced into ends. The plan was clearly to bypass the volume control but this is a 727... which has a switch to turn off the volume control and bypass it!! Just flip the switch the volume control does nothing... fucking hell... One more thing, can anybody make heads or tales of this monstrosity? That's two three conductor cables, basic mic cable would do the job but why set it up like this? Each conductor is screened and they are bridging it ever 10cm or so for moar cancellation? Ground for your ground... for your ground? Also, I'm not truly prepared for the 727 to be almost 20 years old at this point. The caps in this one had a date code from early 2007.

Viva are indeed a special kind of stupid as well. I think they use felt adhesive pads for furniture (to protect hardwood floors) to help their crap circuits filled with some of the worst parts available sound better? Yup makes sense.... Seriously, they use those Rifa PSU caps that are known to crack and short circuit in the audio path. If only there were any better parts out there... 🙄

This is something special as none of this actually does anything. Ferrites work at certain frequencies but the wire has to pass through it... not just have it vaguely in the same area. Lumps of aluminum tape and felt on the cables... yeah nothing at all. It seems like a bad DIY project but I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody is doing this as a service and charging a boatload for it.

I wasn't sure where to put this but this is a PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC so might as well be here. Found this thing dirt cheap in Japan, clearly modded and thought... why not. Might be fun... but boy ohh boy this is utter insanity. It was showed as up and running by the seller so I needed to go in and see how I could change the voltage on it. I didn't snap any pics of it when it arrived but here is one once the felt strips had been pulled off... yeah felt strips: That's the bottom so it was covered in these strips. Now I dug deeper: So there was this layer of aluminum tape that was painted and sealed on the edges with this rather coarse paint, almost like the stuff you'd use to make chalkboard finish. Then underneath there was come copper tape and the adhesive on this was nasty shit. I attacked it with IPA, acetone and adhesive cleaner (mineral spirit) and now it is mostly off the outside. I had to use plastic scrapers to get it off and machine polish the top over (due to all the small scratches from cleaning it) but it looks okey. Now I had yet to open it as the top cover is pushed up through the bottom and you need 4-40# screws to do that... something that is impossible to get here. Two weeks ago I found myself in Chicago on my annual visit and Kevin hooked me up with some that did the trick and here is what I found: Now one starts to wonder about sanity and what hose clamps have to do with audio quality but yeah... this is the most insane shit I've ever seen. This is the top cover and here is this paint the whole unit is covered in. No idea what it is but it is rather inert and I had to scrape it off the top and bottom panels. Seriously... hose clamps. This is so retarded it isn't even funny. A few things to note, see those felt strips, same as were on the outside of the unit and those ferrite beads and rods are all over it. Now to switch things up a bit, here is what looks like a brillo pad around the transformer. It's not steel wool and it was around it all. Here is another shot of the steel what ever and those rods glued to the bottom of the chassis. Also see the silver bits attached to the cables... yeah more on that later. Here it is with the cotton? pulled out of it showing what I've stepped into. How many hours did this take? Our lovely hose clamps again but look at that transformer. It is wound in aluminum tape, then the felt, then some rod, then more aluminum tape... Then those rods on the bottom of the chassis... I've started to peel stuff off and it is like an onion Main transformer and in the bottom right hand corner are all the cable ties holding those silver bits on the cables. Yeah, that is about 10 layers of aluminum plus some small ferrites and rods... Why? Fuck knows... Main transformer peeking through the madness as I need to get to it and read its markings to covert it to 230V. I'll have to do some more cleaning but this was just too good not to post...

I like them a lot and they are technically proficient but lately I've been a bit off on ported designs as they lack involvement to me. Not enough engagement compared to the greats but, not nearly as bad as the Hifiman Shangri-la mini where the sound just hangs there. I've been meaning to make a proper review of them but this year as a whole has just sucked.

I got a bag of sockets from Germany (which I suspect are originally from Audio Valve) and they use the Neutrik contacts. Work just fine and I'll be using them in an upcoming project.

The Hifiman plug has to be treated with the same number of fucks they usually give any of the products... fuck all. They are still using that fucking spacer as the pins are too long even on the Shagri-la mini... it would probably completely bankrupt Hifiman if they had to pay for a single new mold and find some new pins... The real measurement might be on the original SR1, SR2 and SR3 plugs as I believe they are the originals off the shelf part from Sato Parts that Stax simply bought in.

Nothing wrong with LCSC, I use them all the time for some hard to find parts.

No, just use the Vishay VR37's as they are the best money can buy and not expensive

That looks like green-brown-green to me which is 5.1M so almost correct but no way that resistor is rated for the voltage. The GES had various upgrades available over the years.

The issue with any Omega is that they are not that well built so you never know what you are going to get. Some are just fine while others have issues, you can see that with the discussion about different serial ranges sounding different. Now I've owned 30+ units over the years and when they work as they should... they all sound the same. If the "grounding resistors" have broken down internally, internal frame issues, micro cracks in the stator supports and other issues... they will sound different but that's because they are slowly failing and need to be fixed. It's similar to tube rolling while not actually using tubes with similar specs... true shock that they sound different. Those are some nice Omega clones. Where are those from?