I would be very surprised if the damper's physical location in the canal has any impact on tone.  I figure once the mesh is in-line it's doing its job, there's no obvious resonance tuning to the nodal location or anything like that (I think, but who knows).   As far as insertion and removal...

Alright, so my green dampers came in and I auditioned them pretty briefly against the browns.   Green / 1500 ohm: Thumping bass but with relatively little sacrifice of soundstage.  These are heavier and less crystalline than the browns, but nowhere near as muddy as the reds start to get...

You can also check Digikey: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?FV=fff4000b,fff80054,fffc01a7&chp=0   Given this forum has a global reach, you may just want to check through all of Knowles' distributors to find the one that best serves your country...

Lzyboy,   Here are the Mouser part numbers I used and I got only the "right" parts in the mail.   Gray 721-BF-1999-000 White 721-BF-1859-000 Brown 721-BF-1860-000 Green 721-BF-1861-000 Red 721-BF-1921-000 Orange 721-BF-1922-000 Yellow 721-BF-1923-000  ...

Bah, forgot to repost those links:   Rinchoi's super helpful blog post.  The response curves in particular are invaluable to the damper modder. http://rinchoi.blogspot.com/2013/05/shure-se535.html?m=1   The Knowles product page, which is actually a bit shy on information...

First post on Head-Fi, I joined solely to add my experience to this thread.   After about 10 years of faithful service, my Shure E5s finally had the cables break badly enough that I couldn't kludge a fix for them.  I sent 'em back to Shure for an out-of-warranty replacement, along with my...