Here's something I wanted to raise for other owners' consideration, seeing how many Utopias out there must be going on 2-3+ years in age:
When I recently popped out my old pads in order to replace them with some new ones, I discovered a sticky/gooey substance on the exposed inside part of the drivers, around the flat ring-shaped surface that makes contact with the pads. This was easy enough to rub off.
The same sticky stuff was on the flat inside surface of the outgoing, original pads. It kind of looks like oil or grease in the pic:
I proceeded to try to rub this out, too, as described above. Turns out the sticky substance is coming from the pads themselves, and I ended up causing this (mostly) cosmetic damage:
The flat ring-shaped surface there seems like it's just regular hard plastic, but on closer inspection, is slightly soft to the touch. And possibly degrades over time, turning sticky (??).
My current thinking is that this isn't unique to my pads, as a friend of mine had discovered the sticky stuff on his old pair as well, and had no clue where it had come from.
[EDIT] Anecdotally, my first pair of Utopias (which I used throughout the year 2018 before I sold them) never showed any residue, and I remember pulling out the pads on two or three occasions.
Anyway, others may want to give their pads/drivers a quick inspection as well...
