The earpads are the kind with a plastic bracket glued in, yes I think I'll go with an air dry to be safe, I don't have a way to get replacement pads if I mess this up so better safe than sorry, thanks mate.

I feel you, I "sold" (almost gave away) my old pair of starfields to my bro (with a Bluetooth adapter), he lost the left earpiece in a month, basically driving them useless, a couple of months later I lended that same brother my hibi fc3 dac, he broke the 3.5mm input and now it's useless..

+1, my stack is working wonderfully except for the scratchy volume knob, pulling the knob outwards a little seemed to help quite a bit, minimizes the friction noise between the plastic knob and the aluminum chassis