Hearing Aids & Acoustic Guitar

[michaelnel]

I have a really pronounced hearing loss from drag racing, motorcycle racing, rock bands, country bands, etc.. I now have to wear expensive hearing aids in both ears, because I am effectively deaf without them.

Hearing aids are optimized for clarity of human speech in lots of different difficult environments, and they really do a pretty outstanding job of that. But acoustic guitar sounds terrible through them.

The most annoying thing for me is that on any sustained note (imagine yourself playing open strings and tuning) there is a strange warbling sound on top of the note, as if the frequency is changing rapidly. I tried lots of things to get around it, but never could make it go away.

Hearing aids have the capability to suppress feedback, which can happen pretty easily because the speaker and microphone are pretty close together. Turns out that was the cause of the warbling I was hearing. I took one of my guitars with me to see my hearing aid adjuster guy, and we tried a lot of things and the warbling was still there... until he turned off the feedback suppression. Bam, GONE! It made the warbling go away! My theory is that the hearing aids heard a relatively loud constant tone (say, the B string ringing) and mis-took it for feedback and supplied maximum feedback suppression to deal with it.

Now if I put my hand up by my ear the aids will feedback like crazy, but I now have a switchable program in them that is set up for acoustic guitar with frequency shaping (it used to make the guitar sound really shrill too with all the HF boosting) and feedback suppression turned off. When I am playing my guitar I don't have my hands near my ears, so there is no feedback issue while playing.

I am delighted this one is solved, and wanted to share it with those of you who also stupidly beat up your ears when you were young and now use hearing aids.

[yairimann]

Thanks, I'm going to have to look into this. Does it make a difference with how you hear speech now?

[michaelnel]

My HAs have the capacity to store six different programs. I still have a program for speech, one for loud environments like restaurants, and two slightly different ones for guitar. With my HAs they are easily switchable either with switches on the HAs or with the iphone app.

The guitar ones still work for speech too but are prone to feedback more easily than the one dedicated to speech.

[D-Guitar]

I wonder if playing an acoustic guitar in a practice environment may be damaging to our hearing. I have checked my room while playing and it rarely exceeds 80dB's and usually tops out at about 70dB's.

[michaelnel]

Originally Posted by D-Guitar

I wonder if playing an acoustic guitar in a practice environment may be damaging to our hearing. I have checked my room while playing and it rarely exceeds 80dB's and usually tops out at about 70dB's.

I doubt it.

My ears were ruined by the loud things I mentioned in the original post, not by acoustic guitar.

[rstanl2]

Hey pal, I have HA’s also and feel your pain. If you have warble your aids need adjusting. I’ve been there,done that. Look, you said your aids were expensive, well with that expensive price should come service. Go to your Audiologists as many times as it takes to get them set right, they owe that to you. What I did was,get them adjusted,then listen to radio in my car . Turn it up turn it down, sing with the music if you’re a vocalist. When singing, when you hold a note out, that’s when the warble occurs. Tell them you have warble, they know what it is, and know how to fix or get around it. If they don’t, find an Audiologist that does, an Adiologist that works with musicians. You get one shot at this life, and if your music is as important to you as mine is to me, I’ll do whatever it takes. Sorry for the rant,but this breaks my heart. Fight for the best experience possible, your original hearing ain’t coming back. Remember even the best HA is only an “aid”
to what hearing you have.

[v32 finish]

this post really gave me pause.. as I work in a machine shop where the average noise level is "*loud*" and on some days / metals being cut can escalate to "*EXTREMELY LOUD*". Luckily I am in a sort of enclosure.. "office".. (I guess we can call it that ) where I'm somewhat insulated and away from it.. but if i were out there on the shop floor for 10 hours a day, I would be using hearing protection. I only see a few who regularly do.

kind of a pointless post, but a reminder to always take care of your hearing, i suppose! I had one manager who I had to take phone calls for, because he could hear you talking face to face (most of the time) but couldn't hear ANYTHING on the phone.

hope everyone had a good thanksgiving

[rstanl2]

At least wear something that will cut the decibel level way down. One set of ears there is no replacement. Protect them, I wish someone would have told me that years ago. Drove a loud truck for 35 years, not good!

[gfa]

Thanks for this post. I think I will be there, wearing HAs, in the not-too-distant future. I shudder now to think about some of the things I wasted my hearing on in my youth. Aerosmith, ZZ Top, REO, etc. This is like the old guy version of being an audio file.

[rstanl2]

GFA, when you decide to get them, go to a hearing Dr. Go to someone trained to help and test you. Not someplace trained to sell you hearing aids. Just saying!
Audiologists do it the right way, and it could be an easy fix, you never know. If you know your hearing is damaged, go and get tested, then you’ll a Lear’s have a base line of your loss. And maybe, it’s worse than you think.

[121]

michaelnel
About 2 years ago I had the same HA experience as you, with the warbling effect.
It was very noticeable when playing single notes.
When the HA's anti-feedback was turned off, the warbling stopped.

[goldfox]

off the comp for loud noises,in our band the drummer would be like it was mutted or off and on,,i have aids that lets me program them my self on lap top so i can fine tune them when my hearing changes month to month,,music sounds great through them,

[grandstick]

I know I have hearing aids in my future, and have wondered how they could affect my enjoyment of playing and listening to acoustic guitar.

Tommy Emmanuel suffered profound hearing loss from yellow fever as a child. He wears hearing aids all of the time. It would interesting to learn how this has affected his experience with music.

[michaelnel]

Lots of older players have profound hearing loss. Eric Clapton, Roger Daltry, Pete Townsend among others.

[fray]

So what model of hearing aids are ya'll using? Thanks.