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So I've had my's for over 3 years now and they've served me well. My only complaint is that the cables tend to short out quickly (gone through 5), and after warranty is expired it gets expensive to replace them all the time. Until getting back into reading these forums I hadn't even considered replacing them with custom cables, which would probably be a better long term solution. But that's another topic.


I noticed Ultimate Ears has a presence on Twitter now, as many companies do, so I tweeted them about my 5th cable shorting out. They quickly responded and generously offered to send me replacement cables free of charge.


They finally arrived 2 weeks later (I had to remind them, but as soon as I did they over nighted them to me). That gap in time must have caused them to forget I had's because the cables I received were for the custom's. Now, I didn't realize this at first, I was just incredibly excited to see braided cables and thought they finally upgraded the cables.


To my naked eye the pins looked the same and though there was some resistance installing these new cables to my ear pieces, I didn't think much of it and continued to push them in. Upon listening the left earpiece's audio was severely diminished, scratchy and distorted. I realized then I should have stopped as soon as I noticed any resistance at all, but since these are only just slightly thicker pins it wasn't so much resistance that I thought any damage was being done. Despite having poked around here casually off and on over the years I really should have known better, but obviously I'm still a rookie to this game.


To UE's credit, when I let them know what happened they offered to immediately ship me replacements and they are on the way as we speak. As a quick aside, it's been a couple years since I last contacted UE over any issues and since then they have been acquired Logitech and I know these sorts of acquisitions make people nervous that it will completely change the dynamic of customer relations, which does happen all the time, but my loyalty to them is definitely reinforced by their no hassle generosity in this situation, especially considering I'm on the low end of their product line when you look at the grand scheme of things.


So that said, I'm taken care of as far as replacements but there's no sense in letting an extra pair go to waste if they are salvageable. My inclination is that either the female part of the connection got stripped by the thicker pins or the pins being slightly longer caused some wiring or soldering to detach. I found an older post where someone had some really good macro shots of the armatures so I at least have some reference of what things look like inside.


If anyone has had some hands on time working on these things I would appreciate some input; what the problem may be based on what I've said, what would be required in fixing it etc. I'm especially nervous about having to crack open the shell. Reapplying glue doesn't sound too intimidating but I'm more worried about breaking the shell rather than have them come apart cleanly.