STAX and their reliability.

[marios_mar]

One thing that keeps me worried is that I have a STAX system that is worth quite a lot of money and I am afraid that it might just break. I dont know if i am worried for nothing but I have heard bad things about STAX's reliability.

Snake told me that his own headphones eventually died after 10 years without abuse. It just came naturally. And the repair would cost more than $500 for a problematic driver. That means that it was more worth to spend money on a new set. The amp IIRC (which one though Snake?) went for repair as well.

So I see my STAX as a time bomb some times.

Is this some stupid phobia or are there substantial evidence that STAX even though they cost a lot , they tend to break a lot.

Any STAX owners for lots of years to tell us their thoughts?

psivask maybe?

 

[kevin gilmore]

I have stax headphones that are 25 years old and they work as good
as they did when they were new. Which is to say that they have been
outclassed so severly as to be museum pieces. Same thing with a
sennheiser 414 i still have, although the foam is long since toast. Nothing
lasts forever. Still you should be able to get more than 10 years out
of them. The ultra expensive sony r-10's use a bio-celluose element
whose long term reliability and stability are certainly an issue too.

 

[cosmopragma]

I'm owning a more than 20 years old Stax SR5.
After all this years they are clearly outdated by their successors, but they still work fine.
Even if the MTBF of the Lambda systems would be around only 10 years your NOS system , less than a year in use, is still young, so
[size=xx-large]Don't worry, be happy![/size]

 

[pspivak]

Hey Marios, thanks for asking

The SR-Lambda pros from 1987 that I abused over the years finely gave up the ghost on one channel this year. Actually, one channel is about 10 db down in volume compared to the other one. I could not compensate with the balance control any more. I used them outdoors and at the gym with the SRD-P, got them in humid environments, dropped them a few times, all sorts of stuff and it still took 17 years to get them to fail in any substantive way.

The only real problems that I have had with them over the years are:

The foam on the ear pads disintegrating (replaced the ear pads)
Snagging the cable on something one time too many (had the cable replaced once)
My kid stepped on them breaking one of the u-shaped frames (replaced)
Cleaning lady knocked the SRD-P off the shelf onto the floor reconfiguring the connectors and dislodging some of the internal components. (I had to take it apart and push everything back into shape).

I think the Stax are pretty tough and built to take a beating. I wouldn’t worry about spontaneous self-destruction or something just “breaking” during use.

Oh, I treat the SR-003's and the SR-404’s with much more respect then the lambda pro’s.

Remember Marios, "Beat it until it bleeds, and then beat it because it's bleeding".

 

[JazzJackRabbit]

Hm... what about reliability of electrostatic drivers in general? As far as I understand electrostatic drivers are extremely complex and impossible to repair, are they more prone to fail than dynamic drivers? How long do electrostatic drivers last?

 

[KR...]

I know of people who been listening to their Stax headphones since the early 80's! Many still have models from the 70's that still work like new. As long as you take good loving care of them, they will last as long as you let them last.

 

[marios_mar]

thanks a lot guys for your answers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


i forgot to tell you that my fears partially come out of the notoriety of the QUAD electrostatic drivers and how costly they are to repair.

So now the natural question that will follow is how to prolong the well-being of my STAXES in the future.

thanks!

 

[JaZZ]

I don't have any problem with my different Stax drivers; they are 12-20 years old.

 

[Canman]

I have had two Grados and one AKG K-1000 with drivers that went bad. I don't think that elctrostatics are any more prone to break than dynamics. Nothing lasts forever.

 

[marios_mar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canman Nothing lasts forever.

Does that include the non-material stuff as well?

 

[Snake]

The amp which needed repair was the 14S - the SRM-1 Mk2 has never needed to be touched, ever. So it's old with no problems!

Stax itself says at a 10 year MTBF is their historical pattern. That's a FANTASTIC record - a decade before you must send it in for some reason.

The best way I can (now) say to extend the life of a Stax is storage. If you must lay them down during storage lay them down so that the headband's full length is in contact with the table and the earpieces are on edge with the table. This prevents excess dust from (trying) to enter the grids. The foam keeps it out but why not help the best way possible?

Or make / use a can holder. Now that I built mine I am very comfortable with their storage.

Ummm, besides that just watch the volume. Electrostats do not show much distortion prior to their overload point so it can be easy to overdrive them, unlike dynamics which start to show distress as a warning sign.

The design of the electrostatic driver is incredibly simple, but very precise. No suspension / surround foam or spiders to stretch, wear out or deteriorate. The complexity is just in their drive system. As for my personal LP's until I decided to replace them (just like pspivak a channel imbalance, still worked but I just didn't want to deal with it anymore) nothing had ever been replaced or gone wrong. Nothing. Still with their original ear pads, even.

I'll tell you something. Before I got the current Stax system I am using I had a set of Lambda Pros. That is, this is my second Stax system (actually the new 404's make it the third, but the amp is the same). I sold the first one after a number of years because I thought I wouldn't be using them.

A little while later I felt that move was one of the worst mistakes in my audiophile life.

Seriously. When it came to music, and equipment, I was seriously down on myself because I had realized that I had sold my favorite way of listening to music. I was kicking myself. Badly. A few years later I managed to get my hands on another Stax system. It has been here ever since.

And that's why you have heard me say that this thing will be with me until I die. Or upgrade it...to a different Stax system (most likely). I've made the mistake once.

Never again.

This thing is staying

 

[gloco]

I own a pair of SR 44 and SR84's. Both are electret designs and are old as dirt and work wonderfully. The energiser for the SR80's is a little wacky (switch for energiser or speakers sometimes gets mixed up), otherwise works fine (oh, the volume balance is off too). However, the SR40's energiser (SRD4, same as the SR80's), works perfectly. They sound pretty damn decent too, i used to stay up late at night listening to the SR44's with some vinyl and loved what i heard, very transparent and killer midrange (on specific recordings of course).

 

[Snake]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco I own a pair of SR 44 and SR84's. Both are electret designs and are old as dirt and work wonderfully. The energiser for the SR80's is a little wacky (switch for energiser or speakers sometimes gets mixed up), otherwise works fine (oh, the volume balance is off too). However, the SR40's energiser (SRD4, same as the SR80's), works perfectly. They sound pretty damn decent too, i used to stay up late at night listening to the SR44's with some vinyl and loved what i heard, very transparent and killer midrange (on specific recordings of course).

I sold those models at my shop. They were pretty interesting. I love the fact that the SR-80's look like mini Lambdas.

 

[KR...]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco I own a pair of SR 44 and SR84's. Both are electret designs and are old as dirt and work wonderfully. The energiser for the SR80's is a little wacky (switch for energiser or speakers sometimes gets mixed up), otherwise works fine (oh, the volume balance is off too). However, the SR40's energiser (SRD4, same as the SR80's), works perfectly. They sound pretty damn decent too, i used to stay up late at night listening to the SR44's with some vinyl and loved what i heard, very transparent and killer midrange (on specific recordings of course).

The new aka current Stax Amps come standard with a plug (marked Normal) for Electret Stax headphones as well as a plug for the current stax models which use the Pro plug.

As seen here: