The Headcase Stax thread

[spritzer]

Licron is not available here and shipping anything under pressure is a no-go.  

The Comfort was available at my local store so I'll give it a go.  Nice consistency too and dirt cheap.  

[ludoo]

17 minutes ago, spritzer said:

Licron is not available here and shipping anything under pressure is a no-go.  

The Comfort was available at my local store so I'll give it a go.  Nice consistency too and dirt cheap.  

Share a pic please, once you verify it works. BTW I bought Licron from Farnell, they had no trouble shipping it to an EU country.

[chinsettawong]

5 hours ago, spritzer said:

Interesting, I'll see if I can find that locally.  Do you apply it with an airbrush or a sponge?  

Aumkar suggested to apply it with an airbrush, but I simply put a little on microfiber cloth and wipe it on the diaphragm.  After it dries, I buff it off.  It’s dirt cheap and working very well.  
 

Edited Monday at 01:34 PM by chinsettawong

[spritzer]

2 hours ago, ludoo said:

Share a pic please, once you verify it works. BTW I bought Licron from Farnell, they had no trouble shipping it to an EU country.

We aren't in the EU and that muddles everything.  

1 hour ago, chinsettawong said:

Aumkar suggested to apply it with an airbrush, but I simply put a little on microfiber cloth and wipe it on the diaphragm.  After it dries, I buff it off.  It’s dirt cheap and working very well.  
 

I'll try that plus I should have some airbrush equipment somewhere.  I just made some new stators for my Senn HD6x0 design that I want to try out.  

[Pirx]

7 hours ago, chinsettawong said:

Aumkar suggested to apply it with an airbrush, but I simply put a little on microfiber cloth and wipe it on the diaphragm.  After it dries, I buff it off.  It’s dirt cheap and working very well.  
 

But what about humidity? It doesn't seems to be immune for it.

[chinsettawong]

4 hours ago, Pirx said:

But what about humidity? It doesn't seems to be immune for it.

Humidity is always a problem.  We'll just have to try and see.

[Timb5881]

Hey Spritzer, would static- guard anti static spray work?

[spritzer]

Probably, never tried it and it always a question how long the coating would last but well worth a try.  

[Kung]

Try an ATO alcohol solution with a concentration below 10% and add 1-2% volume of AEO7. This is the conductive coating I use now. It can make a transparent coating with a stable surface resistance of 10^8Ω

[judo]

My weakness I do not know these code words: ATO, AE07. I learned chemistry in a few decades ago if not in English.

....

I googled some Fatty Alcohol Polyoxyethylene Ether  and antimony doped tin-oxid. Where can you get these for kitchen tuning?

Edited Wednesday at 04:25 PM by judo

[spritzer]

Kevin warned me about that stuff as it is toxic if I remember correctly.  I have a rule of thumb, if Kevin says something is nasty stuff then I keep well clear.  

[Craig Sawyers]

Antimony compounds are no joke. Highly toxic.

[judo]

This can be a bit more complicated for example HCl is toxic in a short term NaCl is maybe in a long term  Antimony is in some solders and it can react in the real world so it depends.

Afaik AOT is not toxic. I think you can not solve directly the powder in alcohol you have to make a colloide with very little particles. So I thought that solution may be available. I am only curious I do not need this in the minute and I do not want your "secrets"  I asked about kitchen tuning because @Kung's highly pro achievements what I admire are definitely not available for me.

 

Edited yesterday at 10:44 AM by judo

[Kabeer]

On 7/20/2025 at 1:38 PM, spritzer said:

Yeah, pretty much.  

I was clearing up and found the broken X1's so time to do some tinkering.  Sure enough, one driver started failing after an hour or so it's trash at this point... time for something drastic.  I opened them up and nothing looks wrong so I just added some coating to the diaphragm, just a tiny bit.  It's been an hour now and they sound pretty much balanced so this might have worked but it adds another issue, are Stax having coating issues 65 years in?  

Another thing about the X1, the drivers are wired out of phase as in the + signal goes to the back stator.  Might be worth adding a cheater plug to these to reverse the phase to try out and the earpads on the X1 are clearly made by the same company as the 007S pads.  

Are most of the modern failures (X9000 etc) attributed to the driver coating too?

 

RE X1: interesting it's wired out of phrase from the factory! i did feel my X1, whilst sounding good, had a strange soundstage - it was like two walls of sound - and quite different than the other Stax I had. 
Did you try swapping these connections and did you notice the headphone sounded better?