Posted by Klaus on January 11, 2003 at 06:12:31:
In Reply to: Swap my Holton BAT or York for a CB50? posted by Dale on January 11, 2003 at 03:05:28:
Your suggested solution might be the right one for you.
However I don't think, that parting with one of your spectacular large horns will be easy to you.
Your hearing problem is nothing unique in the world of music.
My late countryman, Aage Haugland, opera singer of note, died far too young from a cancer, that some years before his death took the hearing from one of his ears. He still was a phenomenal singer and very much wanted by large opera houses, some of them in the US.
He told a story of going to a rehearsal with one of these, I think in Chicago. He told the orchestra, that he might have problems in adjusting to them because of his recent surgery. At once a large part of the musicians pointed to their own ear(-s).
So AH had felt at home at once. He told that all of his stage movements had been checked, so that monitors could be hidden wherever needed and possible.
We have recently had a thread about a player of a very difficult instrument putting a clip microphone on the bell and then connecting it to a tuner.
Before you give up on one of the big tubas, you might let you inspire of that set-up:
Get a small clip mike of a good quality. Plug it into a small headset amplifier (Yamaha Silent Brass has such one). Headset speakers can be had with a "clamp" over the skull, or they can be mounted on the ear.
It is important, that the speakers are of the open type, that allow your good ear to get free access to sound impulses from the room.
What you need to control your tuba playing is not a full amplification of your full tuba sound. That one you can hear from the room.
Your true need is, what you can not register now: the high frequency elements of your attack. Call them formants, transients, peaks, or whatever the right term might be. The amplification does not need to be very strong, so there should be no "feeding".
The reason, that you have had no success with hearing aids, is, that even if they are "ventilated", they effectively block off your outer ear channel. Thereby they introduce the "finger-in-the ear" effect that vocalists use to check their own tuning: you hear your playing through the resonances/sympathetic-vibrations in your inner windway and head cavities. This hearing is much stronger, than is the hearing of the external sound of your instrument. You perceive it as a major distortion, and you experience, that you can not control and influence the sound of the tuba.
That is why the openness of the loudspeaker is so important. Th ear drums must not be put under at static air pressure.
I have not specified, whether you should use such amplification for your good or bad ear, or it it should be applied to both ears. That will depend on your own tests.
Klaus