My hearing problems ..... going deaf.. HELP !

Jimbo55

not sure if posting this in best section ...
I guess most here are young shredders ???
I'm an oldie, forever beginner, late 60's but don't tell the girls as I still misbehave as a youngster ..
I have posted on difficulties hearing on stage when playing - mi have had regular hearing tests and usual higher frequency loss with age from 4khz, maybe going into the problem zone for 2khz now in a test a few days ago (maybe worsened by a rotten cold recently). hearing 'shop' wants to sell me a hearing aid even though admitting I'm not too bad. Really cant hear other band members when we get going, and nor myself at all, and i am on lead and fly blindly (or shall I say ... deaf-ly) and more often told after was pretty good, but it is no good not hearing well enough myself. Once background noise, i can't even hear people talk as good anymore.
Even at home, practicing, using a backing track, my lead seems to fade amongst it all ....
These hearing aid pepes tell me that aids are designed more for speech than music.
Anyone here suffering same ??? Any thoughts/comments most appreciated ...
I would be happy to buy a real cheapo hearing aid to try (ebay/amazon), even on one ear to see if any improvement before spending out more - of course don't fancy the need for a hearing aid visible ...vanity !!

Musicwolf

Do not buy a hearing aid, they are available free on the NHS.  Boots, or an audiologist, will offer you a free hearing test then try to sell you the same hearing aid as available on the NHS for around £1,500 each.

You may even be able to self refer for a test rather than going via your GP.

horse

I've been using acs earplugs to make rehearsal and gig volume bearable with a loud band, and it also means I hear everything much more clearly. I wonder if you could get some with filters which let through a bit more of the frequencies you struggle to hear, and less of the frequencies that you're fine with.

Jimbo55

horse said:

I've been using acs earplugs to make rehearsal and gig volume bearable with a loud band, and it also means I hear everything much more clearly. I wonder if you could get some with filters which let through a bit more of the frequencies you struggle to hear, and less of the frequencies that you're fine with.

i've mailed acs to ask ! thanks
i know several other guys with the same issues

Roland

Musicwolf said:

Do not buy a hearing aid, they are available free on the NHS.  Boots, or an audiologist, will offer you a free hearing test then try to sell you the same hearing aid as available on the NHS for around £1,500 each.

Don’t buy. Hearing aids have a limited lifetime. I saw my NHS audiologist a couple of months ago. He threw my old hearing aids in the bin, and gave me new ones for free. 

Roland

There are several threads on hearing aids. It’s worth searching for them.

Jimbo55

Seems that everything i have read, and asked friends, is that pretty much all hearing aids are designed for speech, and everything else is treated as noise and eliminated. Cannot find any that for this purpose ? 

Roland

Most hearing aids have a variety of settings, one of which is for music. What many modern hearing aids do is to Detune higher frequencies into the range where you can still hear them. It helps with the aspirants in speech, but screws up the sound of your guitar and other music. I spent a few minutes with the NHS audiologist configuring mine. We turned off all the settings which I’d never use, leaving me with Speech and Music.

shufflebeat

My experience, confirmed by chats with others, suggests (duh!) louder sounds are more problematic than quieter ones. It’s not necessarily that you need to turn things up to hear them, things may just turn to mush beyond a certain dB level.

It’s maybe worth considering whether your hearing loss is of this type. Can you listen to music at low level in headphones without triggering perceptual distortion?

If this is the case then earplugs (Vic Firth, in my case) and IEMs might be worth exploring.