Phone equipment question

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Phone equipment question

Postby johnsykes » Fri Nov 19, 2010 4:04 pm

My wife is really having a problem with her hearing....short of having to spend hundreds, if not thousands on hearing aids....is there an earphone/microphone combo that's available for a cordless phone? Cordless, not a cell phone. Her stroke 16 years ago, knocked one ear for a loop, now having to listen to me for so long, is putting the other ear in jeopardy.

As usual, any help would be appreciated.
Cheers all
John
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Re: Phone equipment question

Postby skyvalleyradio » Fri Nov 19, 2010 4:11 pm

John - there are many plug-in (non-wireless) phones available with variable volume for those with hearing challenges and most of these can easily be toggled between the talk/earpiece and a built-in speaker. We use one of these in our production studio to allow us to set the phone volume correctly for recording interviews. I'm sure there must be wireless units available too and perusing London Drugs, Staples, Future Shop websites would be good places to start shopping for one of these. good luck!
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Re: Phone equipment question

Postby johnsykes » Fri Nov 19, 2010 4:18 pm

svr, many thanks.....actually the reason I added the mike to the earphones is, she can't hold onto an ordinary phone for much longer than a couple of minutes, otherwise she has to put the phone down. There are times though, when that could be a good thing.
J.
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Re: Phone equipment question

Postby jon » Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:21 pm

Good timing on the question, John, as I just replaced my home telephone and headset a couple of days ago, after my low-end Plantronics (apparently an old Radio Shack device that Plantronics still sell as their own) died. I'm better now, but I had neck and back problems at work with a regular telephone, so switched to a headset, which solved my problems immediately, and it has really helped in my first four years of retirement.

In the process of getting a new phone over the last week, I discovered that I could have used my set of three cordless phones with the same new headset that I bought. The standard is a three conductor regular miniplug like that used for headphones on an iPod and practically everything else these days. Only, instead of that plug providing two stereo output channels of audio, it provides two mono channels, one input and the other output, for the microphone.

There may be some old designs around, but any relatively newly designed cordless phone should have a plug for a headset. The low-end Vtech set of three DECT 6.0 technology ones I bought 3+ years ago certainly did. Before that, it was only high end cordless phones that had headset jacks, like my previous IBM one from 1997.

I bought a Panasonic KX-TCA430 headset which is nice because it has a volume control embedded in the cable, as well as Push to Mute button, which the corded phone I bought did not.

Clarity on the ear piece varies widely, so be sure your wife can test it out at home and you can return it if it doesn't work. The Panasonic has sound more like regular headphones, while others I've had are quite shrill.

It sounds like you only need sound in one ear, but there seem to be some headsets with two ear pieces instead of the standard one piece ones. I believe that all one piece ones have reversible mics so you can use it on either ear.

If the standard over the ear type does not work, there are many that embed into the ear, more like a hearing aid, but they vary from ear buds to things that "take over" your whole ear.

One last thing: don't get confused by packaging that talks solely about use with cell phones. If the plug is right, that is all that matters.
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