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Hearing Aids And Detecting For Gold


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One of my good metal detecting friends now needs hearing aids but doesn't know if they will interfere with the electronics of the GPX 5000 or if it will interfere with with his hearing aids, any one have expedience with this? We will not be able to test this out until late February, any help will be appreciated. 

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The 5000 like many other detectors is able to be manually and automatically changed to a low noise channel.  Many of the new hearing aids these days are a form of bluetooth adjustments without the need for an interfering frequency.  It might not be possible to test before you buy.

I would look into the possibility that the bluetooth hearing aids could work directly with a detector like the Equinox.  Someone here will have more info than me.

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I think due to financial considerations and already having purchased his hearing aids, they are not top of the market, didn't really think about how they would work with his detector, the are a lower end hearing aid.  

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I wear hearing aids. If your friend can afford something like a SteelPhase or a B&Z amplifier he should be able to tune his 5000 to where he will be able to: A. hear it without his hearing aids using external speakers or headphones, B. keep his hearing aids on and use external speakers or headphones (that have a roomy enough ear cup). Amplifiers are a wonderful add-on for the hearing impaired. Best of luck!

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The hearing aids will not mess with the GPX 5000 in any way. In general the GPX will not mess with the hearing aids unless you get real near the coil with your head, in which case currents could be induced into the hearing aid enough to interacts with them and be heard as interference in the hearing aid. At normal distances I would expect no issues.

As a side note I just got a new set of Costco KS 9.0 hearing aids (made by Phonak) that have Bluetooth that connects to my phone, plus I bought the extra transmitter box. It will be interesting to see if they will pair directly with my Equinox, and if not the transmitter box will... but how is the latency? Something for a new thread soon.

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I believe it was back in February I made this post and have still had excellent results.  The Equinox 600 easily pairs with my hearing aids and has worked well for me, I now have over 250 hours using this set up and over 2,800 coins for the year.  Latency is a non issue, and it is beneficial I believe working in some environments.

    https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/8663-can-you-hear-me-now/

 

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I sell a lot of detectors to people with hearing loss and in most cases have found hearing aids to be ineffective for detector use unless the person is extremely deaf, they tend to lift everything especially wind noise, birds calls human voices that type of thing which tends to drown out the Threshold. 

The key to detecting with hearing loss is to be able to ‘hear’ the threshold pitch, if you can hear that in all conditions your fine. Most men have hearing loss in the higher frequency range so I usually suggest they use a lower threshold pitch. In my case in my younger days I used a threshold pitch of 60 but since my late 40’s have found a lower threshold pitch of 40 is better (I actually go as low as 20 in the right conditions especially when I’m chasing low/high deep nuggets at depth). Too low a threshold pitch (below 40) and I usually recommend headphones over speakers as the low frequency sounds tend to have a lot of competition in the natural environment.

Just my 2cents

JP

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 I figured out, way to late in life, that I wasn't indestructible. The last time I took my commercial drivers' medical exam I nearly didn't pass because of hearing loss. The funny thing was, I realized I was more concerned about the effects on my detecting than I was about loosing my C.D.L.

1 hour ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Just my 2cents

J.P. Would you like to have your 2 cents in cash or wired directly to you Swiss account?

Thanks for the tips

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Thanks all for your input, my friend, after reading all of the input from you all,  will just test them while detecting when we go to AZ in February. He has been put at east with the answers you have provided. 

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