Hi Westron
It's very easy to move the 009's earpads away from the ears - much easier than the more substantial zolkis-style mods because you don't have to take anything apart.
Firstly, there is some give between the pad and driver casing such that you can lift the pad and slide in slithers of foam/ felt or any material that is, say, 1-3 mm thick depending on how far out you need to go.
Secondly, if you only lift the back half of the pad, it will change the angle of the drivers pointing into your ears, which some say improves the focus of the sound. In this case, you'd cut a sort of crescent shaped slither of foam/felt to match the shape of the back half of the pads. Use paper to make a template. Spritzer posted a photo of this on the Stax thread of the Other Site a while back. In his case, I think he just stuffed a few smaller pieces of foam rather that cut a single crescent.
I use this simple mod myself. 2mm of a felt-like material borrowed from my wife's sewing kit, back half only, was fine for me in that (1) it stopped my ears touching the driver and (2) It did seem to improve the sound slightly, but I wouldn't swear to this as I haven't tried swapping with and without to absolutely confirm my first impressions.
Originally, only one of my ears touched the driver casing and that only very slightly, so it was never a big problem in the first place, but this simple mod has removed the problem entirely.
@ zolkis, I'm interested in your 009 felt Pad change, but it seems fiddly work to me: removing dust protectors, loosening screws, cutting things apart, etc. I fear with my clumsy fingers, the 009's will never be quite the same again! To get the pad materials in and out, is it necessary to do unstitching and stitching of the leather skin?