Ants in my Stax: should I worry?

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radio_head said:

Oh dear... this thread is no longer amusing - its horrifying.

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x2

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mwilson said:

This is my unedited frantic message last night to some fellow head-fi'ers:
I am absolutely heartbroken. I've been sick over the last week or so, and got no listening time until this evening. Finally, on go the phones, music starts, then, in 20 seconds... wait, what's this thing on my finger? A small ant. In utter disbelief, I take the SR-009 off my head and look around. Nothing. Suspiciously, I look under the headphone stand, and notice what looks like tiny flakes, and dead ants. I look at the SR-009, still nothing. Except a tiny little white speck where the cable mount is. I blow on it, hoping it will get dislodged, and it did - but out now come tens of ants, if not over one hundred. Like Ellen Ripley in Aliens I realized in horror that I finally found the nest of ants - in my SR-009.
 
I immediately put them in a ziploc and in the garage. I am disgusted and heartbroken at the same time - even if I bait them out, the nest must have a lot of residue in there.
 

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Your experience is saddening at any price, be it $1k or $10K! Maybe look into freezing your cans. I've seen a lot of delicate stuff get stuffed in a cryogenic box.
 
Of course, though dead the kingdom would forever be with you, short of returning them to Japan.

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mwilson said:

I keep the phones on a Woo stand, with the Stax plastic cover to protect from dust. 
 
I am happy to report that the ants have disappeared, not only from the SR-009, but also from the rest of the audio rack. Second day in a row without rain, and no trace of ant to be found anywhere in the house. It's a shame; the whole last week I perhaps listened to 1 or 2 hours total, and now I've got a terrible cold with clogged sinuses so no listening anytime soon either. It just doesn't sound right under these conditions. I'm glad all my audio investment squandering is paying off 

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Quote:

mwilson said:

This is my unedited frantic message last night to some fellow head-fi'ers:
I am absolutely heartbroken. I've been sick over the last week or so, and got no listening time until this evening. Finally, on go the phones, music starts, then, in 20 seconds... wait, what's this thing on my finger? A small ant. In utter disbelief, I take the SR-009 off my head and look around. Nothing. Suspiciously, I look under the headphone stand, and notice what looks like tiny flakes, and dead ants. I look at the SR-009, still nothing. Except a tiny little white speck where the cable mount is. I blow on it, hoping it will get dislodged, and it did - but out now come tens of ants, if not over one hundred. Like Ellen Ripley in Aliens I realized in horror that I finally found the nest of ants - in my SR-009.
 
I immediately put them in a ziploc and in the garage. I am disgusted and heartbroken at the same time - even if I bait them out, the nest must have a lot of residue in there.
 

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Hi Nick: Really glad to hear that they have gone! Hope you're feeling better too.

This has to be one of the most horrifying threads I've encountered on head-fi. Especially watching the clip of the ants scurrying about at disturbingly fast speeds... and then reading that he found a whole NEST of them in the headphones, with hundreds pouring forth. Not to mention these aren't just any ol' headphones, but some of the most expensive and desirable out there...
 
Nightmare fodder for sure.

I wanted to post a followup to my ant problem, lest my absence in this thread be construed as my becoming their fodder.
 
First of all, let's recap the lovely outside video (thanks Steve for hosting the file):
 
http://www.q-audio.com/antsinstax.mov
 
After some back and forth with Jack Wu - who has been extremely supportive throughout this ordeal - it was decided that I should attempt to clean them up prior to any shipping considerations. With some insights and caveats provided by Purrin and Spritzer I was ready to undertake this task.
 
First order of business was to pick a workspace - my usual one inside the house was out of the question because the living ants, so I chose the garage floor, as it would also double as an excellent squishing surface for any stray insect. I unrolled a few rows of paper towels, and then removed the phones from the sealed bag in which they had spent the last couple of days. After squishing any ants jumping ship with a piece of paper towel, I picked up the ones running on the phones and cable with a packing tape - I didn't want to soil the unit.
 
I removed the pods from the headband, then the pads from each pod. Here's what waited for me under the right pad:
 
http://www.q-audio.com/antsinstax2.mov
 
Here's a photo of it as well:
 

 
 
After removing each part carefully so as not to pick up any ants, nor damage the phones, I got down to driver level. I squished straying ants, and wiped off the remaining ants from the metal frame outside the garage.
 
I then prepared for the reassembly, and took photos of most steps. I cleaned up with alcohol where applicable, and dry wipe where I thought it wasn't safe. The dust covers were not touched in any way, only the plastic driver frame on the outside.
 
Workspace:
 

 
Covered drivers
 

 
Pods
 

 
Parts
 

 
Pod frame
 

 

 

 
Cable entry mounting point
 

 
Pods with outside grilles and o-rings
 

 
Aligning the outside grille
 

 
Pod with outside grille and driver o-ring mount
 

 
Left driver with inward dust cover visible
 

 
Left driver with outward dust cover visible
 

 

 
Driver ready for mounting
 

 
Verifying fit
 

 
Placing cable mount spacers
 

 
Mounting the driver in the pod
 

 

 
Driver all fastened in
 

 
Outside view
 

 

 
Fitting the inside grille. Not yet right.
 

 
Placing the pad o-ring
 

 
Installing the cable mount cover
 

 

 

 
The cable mount bottom strip. Have no idea what it's actually called.
 

 

 

 
... and finally, the pad
 

 

 
 
and the inside cover
 

 
Fully assembled left pod
 

 
Right pod is essentially the same process.
 
Final product:
 

 
 
I'm happy to report that they sound great! But I still have that skin tingling sensation when I wear them, and still take them off every once in a while to look for ants. Brrrrr.

Congrats, good to see all turned out well.

My face when this thread.
 
I would do one of these three.
A)Contact Stax
B)Put on your Big manly balls and crack them open to dust away the little buggers.
C)Burn them to the ground.

Great job!  Now that is some lovely engineering and build quality.  
 
Just keep using them and I'm sure things will get back to normal.  Perhaps try watching a movie w/ your phones?  Here's a link to one of my faves.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slg59ufLKXk

^ not helping, Anax

Your step-by-step assembly, glove and all, was masterful. For whatever reason, my first thoughts were "Silicon Valley!"  Great job mwilson!

Oh, that's a HEADPHONE!?
 
I thought the photos were of a clean room at NASA showing them working on some precision instrument for the latest space probe.
 
se

steve eddy said:

Oh, that's a HEADPHONE!?

I thought the photos were of a clean room at NASA showing them working on some precision instrument for the latest space probe.

se

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Oh, clean room because of the gloves? I see. Could have also been a proctologist's office

Excellent work there, much like a precision craftsman.

Quote:

steve eddy said:

Oh, that's a HEADPHONE!?
 
I thought the photos were of a clean room at NASA showing them working on some precision instrument for the latest space probe.
 
se

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No, that wouldn't be NASA.  NASA would be chalk and a blackboard practicing Metric to Standard conversions.  Or something like...
 

Thanks for the compliments, all. But it was a really simple teardown/assembly. Just fragile and costly is all.

Very precision milling by Stax. Lovely unit to work on.