Can You Hear Me Now?

[Majuba Man]

As we all know there are several tools that we use to successfully use our metal detector, one of those being our hearing. Through out our life our hearing skills diminish whether by accident, life style or by aging. I have been wearing hearing aids for a period of time now and they are greatly appreciated, without them there are many things that I would miss, some more than others.

Using a detector has shown me that hearing and understanding what a detector has has to say is extremely important to be successful. With the aid of hearing enhancers and being able to distinguish between the tones of normal threshold and that slight difference of a target is the difference between success and failure.

Trying to use every advantage that I can I came up with the idea of using my blue-tooth capable hearing aids and an audio transmitter from the detector to accomplish this. I have the Phonak in the ear canal hearing aids and purchased a ComPilot II receiver which only works with Phonak aids. My hearing specialist initially gave me a Demo receiver and was excited to hear the outcome of my experiment. Since I have the Equinox 600 which is all ready blue-tooth enabled all I had to do was pare the two and give it and shot.

The results were fantastic, being able to hear the 'outside' noises and having the detector talking to me at the same time was unbelievable! Since the hearing aids and receiver are medical devices there is no perceived lag time like there is with some ear buds and blue-tooth head phones, perfect. I only have 11 hours using this setup in several locations such as curb strips, parks etc. I know that if I can hear in these areas that in the field gold hunting should be exceptional. I would really like to get some more time in but as I write this the temperature is 13*.

Since the experience with the 600 was so positive I purchased a blue-tooth transmitter from Amazon for $30 and a 3.5mm-1/4” adapter for my other detectors. I can use the adapter on the Whites 24K and with the 1/4” adapter on the SDC2300 I now have total wireless detecting capability. Both the transmitter and receiver charge in only 2 hours and will run for about 10 hours of use time. I do want to try this in different locations but I see absolutely no downside other than having to charge the batteries, no big deal. Anyway, another winter project successfully accomplished.

 

 

 

[Dubious]

Great idea for those who use hearing aids--eliminate the middleman and turn a negative into a positive!  It may also mean that you are now a cyborg ?