As far as I know, Edifier don't plan to change anything at all in Stax Japan, they just want to use the technology for future products. The owner of Edifier is a big Stax fan. I don't think Stax would have let themselves be bought out by just anyone. Likely the portable is being updated partly due to how regularly the available silicon for such things becomes unavailable. AFAIK they only have one engineer who works on everything, one product at a time.

Don't know if this one guy reads the mammoth stax threads but if he does there must be some major pressure with his products being picked apart by so many people and examined for every flaw and imperfection, knowing that it's all directly attributable to you..

Another sr-001 combo. Ends in about about a day. Not too bad of a price. Ultimately depends on what the cost of the new stax portable system will be though.

They used to sell on Headfi for $250, not sure how much they are now.

The good thing about kuboten is that it's headphone oriented, however I'm not sure how quickly they're sending out packages these days.  You might want to shoot Amos a PM about it since he knows Craig personally.  I haven't looked around at this stuff for a year or more, but I remember kuboten being a bit on the expensive side. 
Some of the service websites:

www.rinkya.com
www.shoppingmalljapan.com
www.japamart.com/
www.mailorderjapan.com
www.japonicamarket.com/
www.japantodoor.com/