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Richard Jernigan -> RE: "Which guitar do I play today???" (Apr. 21 2013 18:32:13)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: aeolus
The great thing about 80 is you've beaten the odds and anything more is gravy. The down side is your hearing is crap. I remember at 17 hearing a Segovia recording with probably more than he could hear at his age and being left in a trance. That's the worst of it. I remember reading about Pete Townsend and his campaign to lower the volume at rock concerts because he had young children and his hearing was so poor he couldn't understand their high pitched voices. It doesn't take long for one's hearing to fall to 8000 cycles.
By now the following is practically OT, but I will pick up on it all the same. Both my brother, a distingushed physician, and my audiologist, a Fellow of [whatever the American sciety of audiologists is] tell me that hearing loss with age in modern society is not senility, but rather accumulated noise damage. An 80 year old man who has lived all his life in the Amazon rain forest is likely to have hearing as acute as a 16 year old American girl. Interesting, but not much help to a 75 year old like me who had too many motorcycles, guns and airplanes in his youth.
What is helpful is modern hearing aid technology. Seven or eight years ago it got harder for me to follow conversations in the noisy cafeteria which was the only place to eat at the remote military base where I lived in the Central Pacific. While on vacation back in Austin I consulted an audiologist.
A few years previously I had an interesting conversation in Bali, with an American. He said he was a truck driver back in the USA, and made good money. But surprisingly, he also said he was a member of the family who were the primary owners of the Beltone hearing aid company. He wanted nothing to do with the business because it was so fraudulent. He wasn't interested in going into detail.
So when it came time to consult an audiologist, I mulled over how to select one, since I had no friends in a position to advise me. I looked over the listings and selected the one who I concuded, from my knowledge of Austin, was paying the highest rent for their office. It has proven to be a good, though expensive choice.
She is a Fellow of [whatever]. Her husband is an engineer. At the time, he was an active participant who was available during office hours, so we could talk details of technology. She mentioned clients who were retired faculty members of the Unoversity of Texas music faculty. I called up the faculty people, who gave her a warm recommendation.
Long story short, it has been a good deal for me, though as I said, expensive.
Several years ago I began to develop numbness in my left pinky due to a pinched nerve in the neck from an old motorcycle wreck. I ended up not playing. I believed the reason was the numb pinky.
A couple of months ago I decided, since I am now retired and have plenty of time, to find out what I could do with the sensation left in the pinky. I made a pleasant discovery. The problem with my playing was, in large part more due to hearing loss than to the bad finger. To get enough sound from the guitar I was having to thrash too hard. The resulting excess tension in both hands was messing things up. With the new hearing aids I can once again hear nuances, and I am learning to eliminate the excess tension. The finger is not what it once was, but it is still improving. I'll see where it goes. But once again the sound of the guitar itself is a thing of beauty for me.
The frequency response of the hearing aids can be tweaked quite considerably. At the moment they are just a little too bright. This week I have an appointment, free of charge, to bring in my guitar and work on the tweaking. The retired music faculty members assure me that the audiologist will work with me until I am satisfied.
I could buy a very nice guitar for what I've paid for hearing aids. My audiologist has always been happy to work with me to get things tuned up just right. It's money well spent, as far as I'm concerned. (And I'm quite happy with the guitars I've already got.)
I'm pretty sure you can get an excellent result for cosiderably less money.
RNJ
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