Thanks !! I'm going to schedule an appointment to see about my first set of aids soon so I will keep your post in mind.

Costco. I got Kirklands 4 years ago, with 90 day return warranty and 3 year warranty. They were rebuilt with no questions asked just under 3 years after I got them. There are really only a few manufacturers - my Kirklands came in a box with some Rexton markings, and it was manufactured by Siemens. IIRC, Phonak and Oticon are other manufacturers, and there's one more, whose name I've forgotten. Mine are RITEs - Receiver in the ear. I wouldn't ride with them, because I'm told moisture kills hearing aids, and sweat ruins into my ears. From the hearing aid forum, I conclude that HAs are like saddles - what works for one person may not work for another. BTW, ear wax is a big problem. According to my doc, ear wax is natural. If you keep cleaning your ears, the wax just comes back faster and thicker, or you get sick. Life has been easier since I started cleaning wax out of my HAs instead of my ears. Alas, the HAs didn't reduce my tinnitus; that's another person to person variation.

If you get some of their glasses and you don't mind, let me know how you like them.

Will-do.

I haven't even made an appointment yet - will probably do so in the next week or two...

We've been getting our prescription glasses there for about 10 years and have been very satisfied. Never found a badly made lens (more than I can say about some much more costly optical places) and the frame quality has been good as well. They started with $19 as their lowest price years ago and have only been getting cheaper since then. Got my current pair along with one for my daughter when they were running a 'two for one' sale so mine was less than $4. Of course the price will go up as I could start to use some bifocals now, but it'll still be quite reasonable.

I agree with the comments about the high price of hearing aids. Seems like the revolution in miniature electronics should have brought the price down to more reasonable levels.

I am with you guys on the price of hearing aids. I know that hearing aids are not just amplifiers of sound because most of us have hearing loss of certain frequencies. Therefore these frequencies either need to be amplified or these frequencies need to be modified so that they are a different frequency that we can hear.

You could amplify 5 khz until it ruptured my ear drum and I still would not hear it. But if the frequency was shifted down to 1000 hz I could hear it fine although it would not sound like a 5 khz tone.

In some situations, I would like to have a hearing aid that I could select a frequency band and then have that band shifted into a range of frequencies that I could hear. Also there are times when low frequencies (like around motors) just drown out the higher frequencies. This would be a time that I would like to just block these low frequencies.

With all the technology that we have we should be able to get hearing aids like this for a couple of hundred or less dollars.

Well (waking up and old thread) I finally pulled the trigger, and have now owned my hearing aids for ... about 4 hours!

Question:

I asked the audiologist about wearing them while cycling, and he said there would be no problem. But most posts in this thread indicate that you do not wear them while riding.

I'm interested to know why you don't wear them while riding. Is it the sweat? Fear of losing them? They don't work well? Just don't need them..?

I'll be interested to hear your experiences.

(I'm doing a crit tomorrow, and might wear them during the warm up but remove them before the race itself.)

My old ones had too much wind noise when riding. I tried my new ones and they are fine with respect to noise but my sunglasses abd helmet push against them and make wearing hem while riding uncomfortable. I also don't really benefit from them while riding.

The wind noise can be annoying, but mostly I don't wear them because they're sensitive to sweat. As well I can generally hear lower frequencies so can hear cars and trucks behind me. I'm just not much of a conversationalist on a ride.

I'm guessing your audiologist doesn't ride crits. Yeah, the sweat can be an issue. Although you can purchase hearing aid sweatbands that work fairly well. http://hearingaidsweatband.com/

They are, however, not fool proof. You can still overwhelm their ability to keep you aids dry. Personally, all four sets of aids I've had over the years were all bad when it comes to wind noise. I could hear lost of whoosh, and little else when wearing them. I think the only way you'll know it to try them. Although I'm not sure I'd do that during a race. Hope you get it figured out in a way that works for you.

LOL! I tried to tell him that it's not a doddle around the parking lot on a bike - it's like putting your head out of a car window at 25mph, because that's how fast you'd be going. He gave me a "Yeah, riiiight" look.

Thanks - will look into them!

Heck-no! I took 'em off before this morning's crit, raced, then put them back in again. I'll try them on a social-paced ride first.

I thought that might be the case.

Some of my rides are "social-paced" events, and I always have trouble hearing people while riding. On training rides, though, I agree - it's "shut up and ride!" :D

I have tried several different brands and styles over the years. My current behind the ear aids are Phonaks that I got thru www.hearingplanet.com the referred me to a local audiologists who is the best I have used to date. Hearing Planet's price & service was great. I have also heard good things about Costco. I mainly use mine in noisy environments and only used them once when riding. Good luck!

Costco should be your first stop for buying. They seem to have all the top brands and their prices are much lower than elsewhere.

http://www.cat-ears.com Full coverage model = big improvement, reducing wind noise, enabling me to understand some conversation while riding w/ my Resound Future aids from Costco. Also have the smaller Cat Ears which I will try in warmer weather.

Yesterday I had my annual visit to my audiologist, who also happens to be an ear, nose, and throat specialist. It's official, I no longer have a moderate to severe hearing loss. I now have a severe to profound hearing loss in both ears. Wish I could blame it on Marshall, Fender, Ampeg, Sunn, Orange, Crate, Peavey, Bogner, or Mesa Boogie, but I can't. It's a condition inherited from my mother. Only good thing I can think of today is that I won't hear any of the rattles, squeaks, chain rubbing noises that irritate so many other riders. Of course, as I pass other riders with my chain sounding like a grinding tool, They'll think, "There goes a real Fred." I'm blessed that my accuracy in understanding speech is between 85 - 95% when I can see the person's face. My audiologist said that she was disappointed she couldn't sell me a new set of aids, because I'm at the limit of what aids will do. She then smiled, laughed and said, "There goes two months payment on my summer home mortgage."

If you do use hearing aids and they magnify wind noise perhaps some sort of wind baffle like "Cat Ears" would help. Just this week I learned about them and similar products from this entry on Shorpy.com http://www.shorpy.com/node/17038

LOL

I'd also like to blame some of those (Fender, Gibson and Marshall). Along with Fabrique Nationale (FN) - who manufactured the rifles I used when I was in the military.

It would be nice to pin the blame on someone else ... instead of taking the blame myself for being to casual about wearing ear plugs, because they were "uncool".