Sticky Ears

For a little while now, my trusty Sennheiser headphones have been slowly descending down the tragic path of sticky-plastic-syndrome. They originally came equipped with that velvety soft-touch plastic, and as we all know, that material has an expiry date.

But on top of that, the vinyl of the ear cups has also been slowly coming apart more recently, shedding flakes of black plastic onto my ears and shoulders.

I had been willing to ignore these failings for a while, but most recently another, more serious, failure cropped up. The headphones would no longer charge when plugged in.

These issues are, of course, fixable individually. But, there's also a method with which they can be fixed all together at once.

Sennheiser for whatever reason doesn't make this style of headphone anymore, so I went with Sony instead.

These are the WH-CH720N, which is a product name that could have probably gone through a few more brainstorming sessions.

But names aside, they're lightweight, comfortable, sound alright, and aren't obscenely expensive. They also have USB C charging, which should be a bit more durable than the USB Micro-B port on the Sennheisers.

And they don't look half bad, either.

Of course while I was packing the old headphones back up to stick in the e-waste drawer that everyone has but nobody acknowledges the existence of, I noticed that apparently a little bit of ear-related humidity had built up inside of the headphone case over the years.

I have to admit: I didn't know a USB cable could rust like that. (For the record, this isn't the cable I was using to try to charge the headphones)