UE-10 Pro material separation/crack?
Sep 30, 2004 at 8:37 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 94

lindrone

King Canaling
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Just wanted to see if anyone else is noticing what I just found on my UE-10 Pro. For the past few weeks I literally haven't touched them much at all, they've been doing nothing but sitting in their box stored away. The other day me and my friend were talking about it, I took them out of the box, and to my surprise I found what seemed like a crack on them.

Well, it's not really a "crack", but a separation between the half-shell of the full-soft material and the shell of the hard acrylic material. Basically, I remember when I first got them, you have to look really, really hard to see the separation of where the full-soft material is glued and sealed against the hard acrylic backing. Now the separation is very clearly visible.

What's even more, is when they're squeezed, the material clearly has started to separate at where the they were glued. Also there's a small crack that's started to veer off from the "line" at where they were glued together.

Has anyone noticed this with their UE-10 Pro? Of course, those who still have the full-soft material, that is...

I'm thinking about contacting UE to get it replaced... or.. maybe just tell them to send me an UE5c instead (I don't even want a refund)... Don't know how well either issue will go over with them.
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 8:42 PM Post #2 of 94
Didn't KPOT post about having the same problems but not sure what happened after that.
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 8:51 PM Post #4 of 94
Quote:

Originally Posted by iamdone
Didn't KNOT post about having the same problems but not sure what happened after that.


You mean KPOT? Cause I do remember him saying something like that...
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 8:54 PM Post #5 of 94
Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoide
You mean KPOT? Cause I do remember him saying something like that...



Yeah, I'LL fix my spelling. Sorry.

Yeah, I thought he was going to post a picture or something and trade them for the hard acrylic model.
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 9:00 PM Post #6 of 94
Quote:

Originally Posted by Big D
I have used my soft UEs far more than you Lindrone and I've not had this problem.

I can see where the two materials join due to their different refractory index but there is no damage between the two.



The separation is certainly not severe, but it's visible from the outside, not due to refractions either. It's a very visible.. white-colored crack...

I think it's a problem with gluing together two material of different consistency, and maybe one of them had expanded/shrunk differently with temperature change over time or something.. hmm..
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 9:04 PM Post #7 of 94
Well, I'd say you should be entitled to at least getting them replaced with the hard acrylic model. Not sure they'll switch to the ue-5c but as long as they have to replace them anyway and you're not asking for a refund, I don't see why they wouldn't do it.
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 9:09 PM Post #8 of 94
Quote:

Originally Posted by iamdone
Well, I'd say you should be entitled to at least getting them replaced with the hard acrylic model. Not sure they'll switch to the ue-5c but as long as they have to replace them anyway and you're not asking for a refund, I don't see why they wouldn't do it.


From what I've understood remolds, etc. all mean tossing the old canalphones and building the new ones from scratch (you can't remove the drivers once they're inside the silicon/acrylic), right? In that case, they'd prefer to give him the UE-5C b/c it's cheaper.
 
Sep 30, 2004 at 9:13 PM Post #9 of 94
Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoide
From what I've understood remolds, etc. all mean tossing the old canalphones and building the new ones from scratch (you can't remove the drivers once they're inside the silicon/acrylic), right? In that case, they'd prefer to give him the UE-5C b/c it's cheaper.



Yeah, I even ask the audiologist this when I was getting my remolds. They have to completely discard the whole headphone. They don't get recycled to be used for future headphones. Seems kind of a waste but that assures top quality.
 
Oct 1, 2004 at 5:42 AM Post #10 of 94
Any chance that you can post a pic that shows the separation/crack in the UE10? Are these cracks similar to the ones you saw/heard about when researching the UE and Sensas many moons ago?
 
Oct 1, 2004 at 1:00 PM Post #11 of 94
lindrone -- I think it would be great to hear your impressions of the UE5c!
 
Oct 1, 2004 at 1:59 PM Post #12 of 94
Hi Lindrone, I owned the full-soft till two or three weeks ago, since mid-May. I did not experience any fracture at the seam between the two materials.
Could you post a photo of this, I'd be curious to have a look (I asked KPOT the same but he sort of disappeared from the forums).

Sorry to hear this, though. I think Ultimate Ears will definitely stand behind their product and support you to your full satisfaction (at least considering everybody else's experiences).
 
Oct 1, 2004 at 4:22 PM Post #13 of 94
I'll take a photo sometime this weekend, and contact UE next week about it. We'll see what happens.

Quote:

Are these cracks similar to the ones you saw/heard about when researching the UE and Sensas many moons ago?


Somewhat similar, but a little different.. the ones I've seen before started approximately the same way, but had more perpendicular cracks to the joint surface... mine is still mostly alongside the joint surface with a little bit of crack veering off to the side.
 
Oct 4, 2004 at 11:06 PM Post #14 of 94
Took some pictures this weekend. The crack is on my right driver (although there's a bit of that on the left driver as well.. but much lesser degree). Click on the picture for a much larger version if you want to look at it up and close.







And this is what happens if I squeeze on it a bit...




This is my left ear driver unit for comparison purposes.. there's a slight crack if you really look closely, but much less apparent.

 
Oct 4, 2004 at 11:10 PM Post #15 of 94
OMG that's horrible!!!! Especially the picture where you squeeze the canalphone and the whole thing just splits in two....
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PS: I see you must have trimmed your nails very well for those up-close hand shots.. :p I though about that b/c I'd *just* trimmed my nails, hehe
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