I have a very simple usability mod for the A5 I wanted to share.
The E12A has an awesome volume knob, heavily knurled, giving your finger a kung fu grip. The A5 volume knob may as well be made of glass - it's slippery and very hard to get a grip on it. Why they didn't use the same knob as the E12A is beyond me.
I was going to just order a different 13mm knob, nicely knurled like the E12A's knob. But upon closer inspection of the stock A5's knob, the red 'stripe' (which I originally thought was painted on) turned out to be a thin red rubber o-ring.
Well, all you do is remove the red o-ring (using your fingernail or the point of a sharp object like a sewing needle). Here's what you're left with:
(Note you DO NOT have to remove the knob itself. I only removed it when I thought I was going to replace the knob. To do this mod, you can leave the knob on.)
Anyways, once the red o-ring is removed, I found a similarly sized (but just a tad thicker) o-ring, and reinstalled it back onto the knob. The results are a nice grippy rubber surface that allows the knob to be turned with ease. A vast improvement over the stock knob!
Here's the finished product:
Note how the new o-ring is thicker, protruding from the edge more than the stock red one did. This is what provides the grip for your fingers.
The whole process from start to finish takes <10 seconds. The o-ring like I used runs about $0.01 to $0.02, and you can get them numerous places (I happened to get my o-ring from a case of assorted o-rings I already had laying around). If you can’t find one that fits I an assortment, lemme know and I’ll post the exact size of the one I used.
I saved the original red o-ring in a baggie and stored it inside the A5 retail box, if for some odd reason I ever wanted to go back to the stock red o-ring.
Enjoy!