I have noticed a pretty dramatic channel imbalance of late in my ancient Stax SR^ headphones, it is the right channel that is much lower by a kind of guesstimate of quite a few dB, so much so that a centred phantom image is no longer appearing especially with vocals. I thought it might have been settings in my computer, or a dodgy cable connection to the ear pad, or a fault in the "energizer" unit or all of the above.
The interwebs are a dangerous place for hooey, but I was wondering if this response I found for this exact problem, although the particular Stax model is not stated, is hooey or is worth a try? I thought I would check first before catching myself doing this and adding another dark secret to my historic audiophile behaviour."
"Just making this post for people like me scouring the web for possible fixes for sudden channel imbalance in their Stax electrostatic headphones. Most are ancient forum posts with 50+ pages of comments with no clear answers, however for one I found randomly posted by "spritzer" on head-case which worked.
Unplug your headphones, discharge them (touch all the pins with your thumb). Give a good open hand slap (not too hard, but not too soft) on both sides of the quiet driver (back of housing, and pad side). Plug back in and test.
Hopefully this fixes the issue, couldn't believe it when it worked flawlessly, when I had a 10db difference between drivers before slapping it.
I guess on the plus side due to this whole ordeal I have a new amp and Stax headphone I bought in expectation for replacing this headphone or amp ..."
