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  #16  
Old 11-14-2018, 05:14 PM
mcmars mcmars is offline
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I like my 5th ave kingpin II, very versatile guitar with great tone. I liked it well enough, I upgraded to one I saw on reverb that had lollar PU and some upgraded electronics. Investment wise, it is good as it has a good following and is easy to trade in or sell down the road. I have had several seagull guitars and they are all good. I had one that had structural issue 30 years ago and I was given a brand new replacement.

I really feel for you guys with the hearing sensitivities. I had a bout with tinnitus a while back which I attributed to being the backstage emt for a huge annual blues music festival. It went on for about 6 months or so for a few years after the festival, made it impossible to understand dinner conversations at loud restaurants and other social events and bothered my sleep. But I quit the job and pretty much fully recovered. I am always the first person to cover my ears at loud concerts when everyone else is enjoying the 130dB noise. I always hear high and low frequency feedback when others seem oblivious. I walked out of a concert last week when the high frequency feedback ringing got to me and I was tired of holding my ears shut, an acoustic concert no less. But what you guys are going through is way beyond anything I could imagine. I would like to know more about the causes for these rare conditions, time for google search. I bet there is going to be a lot of people suffering from different hearing issues in next few decades from all the loud music all of us have been exposed to, everyone has earbuds plugged in to music these days.
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  #17  
Old 11-15-2018, 10:59 AM
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BoneDigger BoneDigger is offline
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Everyone keeps flinging Godin at you, and they are nice guitars, but I get the impression you are more interested in an electric archtop. The Epiphone ES259 or the Guild X175b are to wonderful options to explore. They both have excellent P90 pickups and great clarity.
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  #18  
Old 11-15-2018, 02:53 PM
Carbonius Carbonius is offline
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Originally Posted by BoneDigger View Post
Everyone keeps flinging Godin at you, and they are nice guitars, but I get the impression you are more interested in an electric archtop. The Epiphone ES259 or the Guild X175b are to wonderful options to explore. They both have excellent P90 pickups and great clarity.
I hadn't seen the Guild before. Nice specs, I'll look into it more.

I can't find an Epiphone ES259. Is there perhaps a different number? How do you find the reliability of Epiphone? The Emperor II I tried already needed a fret job (low and high frets on some strings). I find that surprising on a new instrument.
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Old 11-15-2018, 02:58 PM
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I hadn't seen the Guild before. Nice specs, I'll look into it more.

I can't find an Epiphone ES259. Is there perhaps a different number? How do you find the reliability of Epiphone? The Emperor II I tried already needed a fret job (low and high frets on some strings). I find that surprising on a new instrument.
Sorry, typo there. I mean Epiphone 295:

https://youtu.be/HLrknKQhcHk

I have one and it was in need of a minor setup, but wasn't bad at all from the factory.
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  #20  
Old 11-15-2018, 04:02 PM
Carbonius Carbonius is offline
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Sorry, typo there. I mean Epiphone 295:

https://youtu.be/HLrknKQhcHk

I have one and it was in need of a minor setup, but wasn't bad at all from the factory.
Now I found it, thanks. I'll check them both out in detail.
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  #21  
Old 11-15-2018, 04:51 PM
Carbonius Carbonius is offline
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I would like to know more about the causes for these rare conditions, time for google search.
Thanks for the info on the guitar, good to hear.


The following is all hearing related, no gear talk in the rest of this reply.

I sure am glad yours cleared up. That is the case for the majority of people. The brain usually rewires after a certain point of time to ignore the tinnitus. I know exactly what you're talking about when you mention feedback and so forth. I've always had sensitive hearing and I would hear feedback before anyone else seemed to. When I was a sound man I could catch it before it really got nasty. Meanwhile the other guys would let it get nasty and stay there for a few seconds before they even moved for a slider. Drove me crazy but now I understand more so why I was that way and other people were not.

Hearing is so complex and so awe striking. I have been completely shocked as I studied it more and more in-depth, to all the functioning of the ear.

There's the things most of us know like, thousands and thousands of hairs that converts sound and then reassembles it in our heads to create the original sound, all at the speed of sound. That is shocking that all that actually exists in such a small part.

To my understanding this is where tinnitus happens. A hair gets broken from a sound wave that is too big and one of two things happens; it never functions again or it stays stuck in the "on" position. Although there are certain aspects of this that I do not understand. some people have gone to extreme solutions like cutting off their ear only to find the frequencies increase instead of decrease. So I decided I would keep my ears.

What I didn't know until these problems started for me was that the ear also has natural compression. When I say compression I quite literally mean the effect that we use to put a ceiling on how loud something can get. So a normal ear will compress signals to a point. Of course, when the decibels get too high, there's no protecting anybody. My ears have lost the ability for compression on certain frequencies. These frequencies spike for me very fast. While most people are conversing over a dinner meal, I am in outright pain at the sounds of cutlery on plates.

Perhaps even more amazing is, your ability to be balanced and to know where you are positioned in an environment is because of the semicircular canals in your ears. You have 3 of them in each ear for your X, Y and Z axis. Just picture yourself holding a Rubik's cube and the 3 different directions you can rotate sections to understand what I mean by the 3 axis. That is why people who have ear infections can have horrible vertigo and balance issues. External pressure is placed on the canals but they don't know that, so they send a false signal to the brain that you are spinning in circles when in fact you're sitting still. The semicircular canals are literally piping. I had a hereditary predisposition to damage there as sections were thin. I have a hole in one. When certain sounds are loud enough I completely lose all balance. I reach out, grab things quickly and hold on. Often times it overwhelms my system enough that I lose my vision for a few seconds. I'm certain I'm still able to see, but my system just won't relay sight to me. It's quite literally like I'm "offline" for a few seconds.

I'm guessing that sounds pretty horrible, but within it is the absolute marvel of just one part of our body. It's absolutely shocking to me that this exists within us and that it's so old. We only came up with the ability to create such tech ourselves in the past century. Yet this has existed in animals and humans for thousands and thousands of years.

The take-away?? Protect what you have! Once it's gone you may never get it back. Isn't it ironic that for the sake of musical enjoyment, we risk the ability of hearing ever again due to excessive volume. The odd time that I go to a concert now I wear earplugs! I still hear everything just fine at 30db less!

Last edited by Carbonius; 11-15-2018 at 05:47 PM.
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  #22  
Old 11-15-2018, 06:41 PM
Rudy4 Rudy4 is offline
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The latest research bears out that tinnitus has little or no bearing on the condition of the hearing mechanism within the ear. That used to be the commonly held belief, but research found that the origin is actually on the neural level within the brain.

The most often sited research shows that people who have had extreme levels of destruction of the ear components, up to and including removal, still have the same levels of tinnitus. There's a lot of research that bears this out, including brain activity studies.

It is also widely accepted within the community of folks who study tinnitus and other related issue that although it can be triggered from excessively high levels or lengthy exposure that it can be as much hereditary as any other cause.

There are a lot of internet sites that have research available, but there is not any cure, or even effective treatment at this time. Disregard the claims made by infomercials and drug / vitamin pushers.
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  #23  
Old 11-15-2018, 07:14 PM
Birdbrain Birdbrain is offline
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I first saw a doc about "ringing in the ear" when I was in my mid-teens. That was probably before my first rock concert, which was The Beatles. I didn't shoot guns, so the loudest thing I'd been exposed to was a lawn mower. I did have many dire childhood diseases, including scarlet fever, which I suspect was a factor, but who knows?

The ringing persists now, 50 years later, constantly. I've learned to ignore it, mostly. I did try hearing aids that put out subtle pinging tones to retrain my brain, while boosting lost frequency response in the low trebles to compensate for my mild hearing loss. After one month, I felt they were making a slight difference-- but the stress of wearing them was worse. Imagine tucking two thousand-dollar bills behind both your ears. Imagine that cash is miniaturized so you can't feel it, and can barely see it if it's dropped. Twice I freaked out after losing one, finding it later on the bathroom floor. Hearing aids are a flawed product, in my experience. Unless you live in a chair and never go anywhere, fine. But plenty of folks do feel differently, as they trade their $50 apple airbuds for $150 cordless ones, also easy to lose.
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  #24  
Old 11-15-2018, 07:38 PM
Birdbrain Birdbrain is offline
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The 5th ave uptown with the Bigsby and Godin HB pu's seems good to me. I'd love to give some Duncan P-Rails with triple shot rings a whirl in it. They are a direct drop in for an HB slot. There's a special Godin Montreal with them, but they are missing a sound because they went with the on/off/on mini-toggles. I also prefer the full hollows vs semi hollow. Some guys say the P90 with the single coil rail out of phase is quite the sound.

Still pondering... thanks for the input!
My Godin Icon has the P-Rails (that's the "Convertible" part). Two of those x a 3-way switch x 3 settings for each pickup = a baffling assortment of possible tones. It's a nifty feature, but not a reason to buy a specific guitar. I hear definite differences in each choice, but none of them have the raw power of a single P-90 backed up by a hollow cherrywood box. Sitting in with Strat players, I feel like I brought in the bulldozer... right until the traffic report shows up red, with feedback on Fifth Avenue. Anyway, I think two P-90s on a Fifth would be ideal.

One of the best things about my flock is how the necks all have similar profiles and feel, with just a little more width for the acoustics. That makes switching instruments easier and simpler.
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  #25  
Old 11-16-2018, 10:55 AM
Carbonius Carbonius is offline
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Thanks Rudy4 & Birdbrain

My incident also didn't appear to be sound induced. It started after swimming, or that was the issue that broke the camels back. I was having fun with the kids and showing them how dad could make huge splashes. Something about the water displacement, then it rushing back around my head as the huge WOOOOOSH THUD forms, then instantly sinking down 8 feet seems to have done it. I had also started drumming so perhaps the high-hats contributed... but it happened on that day.

In studying Hyperacusis I found there can be psychological issues over time. Some people do well with counseling and a support group environment. My community is too small for that, however there some offices that do treatments for Tinnitus and Hyperacusis. I'm finally at the point that I am pursuing it. I've heard of Tinnitus retraining therapy as well, I'm skeptical but I will check it out. I've also heard that drugs and that really do nothing more than what a placebo would.

I know someone who had mono and had Hyperacusis as bad as mine in that time frame. But the Hyperacusis left with the mono. That got me thinking it was pressure related. I started pressing on my head and found some interesting points. If I push hard just above my ear that rings that most, the ringing increases substantially. Also if I turn my head very far to one direction. This stretches the SCM muscle (sternocleidomastoid) which attaches by the base of the ear. Again, pressure. Things I will discuss with my Otorhinolaryngology (ENT) at my next appointment.

50 years Birdbrain... YIKES!! Most people I ask who wear hearing aids don't like them, but find they need them. Seems to be a balance of how bad the need is for the benefit. They seem worst in group atmosphere's. The prices are shocking and make no sense to me. You can get custom molded in-ear monitors for substantially less. You can buy in-ear products that have an app where you can adjust volume AND frequency on the fly. I'm guessing that a lot of the price is for the ongoing adjustments and so forth. If a top-of-the-line, super high-tec cell phone is $1000, how can hearing-aids be $2000??

Getting my mind off it is key. Classical guitar allows me to play with no pain at all. So that's a nice break. Now I'm seeing if I can get closer to what I used to do and maybe do more. We'll see if I can find something in the arch top electric realm.

Thanks for the input!
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