After looking over the old teak version and the newer veneer, the teak certainly looks like a nicer version...more of a flagship IMO. While I certainly appreciate hifimans involvement and commitment with the community here, I feel they may have overreacted somewhat to the complaints based on what I know about the actual problems (limited knowledge not withstanding). I wonder how many hundreds or even thousand, teak cups got file 13'ed due to the complaints.
The whole pad diameter issue was just about ridiculous. The Momentum is about half the size of the new hifiman pad. You don't see Sennheiser recalling any of their pads to please a few...good grief.
I'm of a mind to pull my pre-order and let this get sorted out until hifiman feel confident that they are ready to bring a solid product to market irrespective of a few naysayers. When they are ready I'm sure that they will deliver a fine hp and people will line up to get it.