Actually, it works well on soft/wet wax, too, because it prevents you from shoving the wax further inside the canal. I think it works best for me after I take a shower and run warm water in and out of each ear a couple of times.

I agree that their diagram seems to imply that you "pop" the dry stuff off one side of the canal and then drag it out with the loop, but softer wax actually adheres to the loop fairly well, at least for me.

I read something interesting, and yet a bit confusing, a few weeks ago......that the skin inside the ear, including the ear drum itself, should be constantly renewing itself. The article said that doctors put an ink spot in the middle of the eardrum of patients in the study, and they tracked it as it followed a spiraling path around the canal and eventually exited the ear as the outer layer of skin was shed. In my case, I wonder how well that works.

I had the wax syringed out in a doctor's office once, and I couldn't believe the size of the chunks that came out. The nurse actually gasped when she looked in my ear after it came out and ran for the doctor. She thought she had done something terribly wrong, because she said the canal looked extremely red and raw. The doc said that no, it was just that the top layer of skin in there had become so strongly adhered to the wax that it popped off, too. It honestly didn't hurt, but she said it sure looked as if it would.