Posted for Crooked Stan - Custom Ear Molds for Bluetooth and Ear Phones

[Frog]

Posted by Frog because for some reason Stan couldn't post the image

I talked to der Frogmeister this week on the tele (I'm a Compu-Tard) and bluetooth headsets came up somehow. I promised him I'd PM him information about my little trick and it hit me that I should just post a thread.

This is cool and I learned about it on a Motorcycle Forum somewhere years ago. I ride an old Goldwing that finally qualifies for a Kansas Antique Tag this year, in case you wondered, but I digress....

Amazing Mold Putty made by Alumilite is a two part silicone product that you knead together to a chewing gum like consistency. It cures in a few minutes and is pretty durable. The one in the picture I'm including is a couple of years old. I've never figured out how to tint it, so I look like a Goober wearing it around according to The Queen.

Goober?     I. Don't. Care.  (Clear enough?)

I can't feel it in my ear after a while and it is pretty much all day comfortable.

I buy the kit at Hobby Lobby for about $20. With a 40% off coupon, it makes it about 13 bucks in Kansas.

There is some skill involved. It will take several tries to get what you want for a bluetooth headset the size of my VXI Xpressway II (shown), but wired earbuds are pretty easy. Use the kind that have a removable tip, and the angled types are easier to accommodate. Pull the tips off. You don't need them anyhow, and it makes it impossible to get in your ear canal....at least with my ears.

The only trick is boring the hole for the audio after curing. I just go get a tiny copper tube available at any Ace Hardware and sharpen it a little with a hone so that you can spin it in your fingers and it cuts better than it would if it were blunt. The stuff won't stick to your device. Heck....it won't stick to pretty much ANYthing, so just mold it, take it out of your ear and let it cure a little while longer then cut the hole. That's what I always do.

Just mash it into your freshly laundered ear, shove the device inside and go look in the nearest mirror, Goob. Wait a few minutes and there ya are.  You've got a minute or two to adjust it for fit etc. If you don't like it, throw it in the trash and start over. There is enough in your 20 dollar kit to make a bunch of them.

The shelf life of this terrific product is simply HORRIBLE. So check the date of manufacture if possible and keep your receipt. 6 or 8 months is the outside limit.

The headset shown can be easily dislodged from the earmold, so a little caution is prudent when working on concrete floors.

I use a different headset when riding a cycle which connects to my cellphone, and I nearly always have on my helmet, eliminating The Goober Effect™. Simple the wired earmold speakers are MUCH MUCH smaller than what I've shown on my picture, requiring less silicone. If you are going for wind attenuation, a little beefier mold is a good thing anyhow.

So there ya go. That was all free of charge and probably worth EXACTLY what you paid for it for most of you.

http://www.hobbylobby.com/p/22271

[Gilligan]

Stan, I assume you use this trick for IEM's as well.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Yes. I've never tried with anything that approaches audiophile level IEM's because I've only owned a total of 1 (one) pair of them. I lost the left side monitor--out of warranty of course.

It might make an audiophile complain about loss of response in a certain Frequency Range. They are pretty picky about such things. Doesn't matter to me...

It makes a 30 dollar Skull Candy set more comfortable without any noticable loss to These Olde Ears.

And for the normal scoot pilot who wears a helmet and likes his iTunes...this is an awfully attractive option to dropping a couple of C-notes on a custom pair. Plus, these are soft and arguably more comfortable than the harder custom pair you have to send away for. If the monitors break, I just go back to Best Buy. YMMV.....

[Gilligan]

I've put some some diamond in the rough $12 Koss earbuds against some e1's with a bass player and he was kind of pissed that they were only $12 bucks compared to what he paid.

Now, I've never put them against e3's or anything, but I bet it doesn't take much to compare when the difference in dollars are taken into account.

Sorry, but I'd rather pay $30 bucks for some custom molded set that sounds 90% as good vs spending another 10X that to get that extra 10%.  Especially when we are talking live and when you compare it to wedges that we were using only 10-20 years ago... Shut up.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Give it a whirl and I think you'll like it.

If you can invest the time (and you actually care...I don't) I believe you can cast your plugs as I've described, and treat them like a positive, casting a negative, then producing a positive of a more durable material. You can even tighten them up a little by coating the original positives in something before casting the negatives. Spray lacquer maybe? I made some casting negatives out of Walmart Clear RTV Caulk...their cheapest brand...but didn't like the positives it produced nearly as well as the original molds.

I used 2oz deli cups for the mold containers, which I always keep around here anyhow. You have to mist a little water into the RTV (yes, you read that right) and mix it well, or your "Negatives" will seemingly take a decade to cure. Water apparently acts as an accelerant to some brands of Silicone Caulk. Weird, I know. It's repeatable and fast.

Finally, my 20 buck earmolds can go 2 years easy, so I just quit right there. And if your fancy In Ear Monitors (snicker) crap out, just pull them out and stick in the replacements. They have to be utterly identical, but who cares at $30 or less?!? The yellow Chewing Gum Blob in your ear won't attract chicks, but I'm past that phase by about a half century. YMMV.

I've made some earmolds for attenuation only, and they are pretty comfortable. But for shooting a Glock 40 at in indoor range--and you know who you are--they won't perform nearly as well as carefully inserted roll up foamies.

I like mine to pipe in audio UNDERneath a good set of shooters muffs when at the range. That is the bee's knees in my book.

But if you're friend with Short Man Syndrome and Pointy Cowboy Boots in the next booth with his 454 Casull is trying out his New Hand CANNON, you still might wanna do some roll up foam plugs underneath the bonafide shooters muffs. Leave the custom earmolds at home until he gets Carpal Tunnel or comes to his senses. Or maybe he'll run out of money shooting expensive factory loads.

And I didn't properly thank Andy for posting this for me. I can't imagine why the forum didn't like my photo montage. I dropped down to about 1.5 meg jpgs and pdf's and just could not get it to go, no matter what I tried. I imported them into Signlab, sized and shaped them into a usable pic, then exported the image as a jpeg. I've posted several pics over the years without any inexplicable errors. Thanks Frog!

[Frog]

And I didn't properly thank Andy for posting this for me. I can't imagine why the forum didn't like my photo montage. I dropped down to about 1.5 meg jpgs and pdf's and just could not get it to go, no matter what I tried. I imported them into Signlab, sized and shaped them into a usable pic, then exported the image as a jpeg. I've posted several pics over the years without any inexplicable errors. Thanks Frog!

For the record, I did nothing special with the jpg, and the text I merely copied and pasted from your doc.
As far as I know, administrative powers had nothing to do with it, and it should have been fine from your end.
A mystery.

[Gilligan]

I have EXPENSIVE custom molded attenuators.

But they drop the frequencies evenly so I can still mix with them.  I had 15db and 25db filters (might have been 10 and 20's)... Can't find them right now, maybe they will turn up after the move... Then again, I really don't need them these days as I'm all but out of that scene.

I remember the first time I used them in a club... It was as if the band was magically transported back 50-100', kind of unnerving at first.

I love my ears.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

Note to The Chief Amphibian: 

I have a clue, as improbable as it might be...as to why my original post wouldn't "take" at least from my computer....or maybe any "user" login without admin permissions.

I posted a reply to a different forum yesterday that "truncated" mysteriously. It happened EXACTLY at the special keyboard character for the "degree" symbol, which is alt+0176. Everything before that symbol posted just fine. The degree symbol was missing as was everything after that. This particular gun enthusiast forum is NOT moderated in any significant way, so I know for a fact that no-one on the modified the post.

Back to TSB, I read through the original write-up which you kindly posted for me and remembered I had included the alt+0153 symbol. It posted just fine in your surrogate version. It appears as a "TM" I jokingly inserted after "The Goober Effect".

So in the last few days I observe my two specific goofed up posts--on two separate forums--both had special keyboard characters included in the body. The TSB post in question had an attachment, but the other post DID NOT. So it got me to wondering.

I tried to do a search of TSB for a couple of alt+ special characters, to see if they occur in the same post with a picture to no avail. Apparently Google doesn't have any algorithms that screen for special characters.

I don't want to overplay this error, there are just so many zeros and ones crashing around in the wacky world of computers. And with the nature of "updates" that often break as many things as they fix it may as well stop right here. But I tried over and over and over, with both Firefox and Opera including various sized attachments with both jpg and pdf suffixes, I was bewildered.

There. That's off my chest.

[Homer]

Stan, do you use any sort of helmet communication systems or is this set up just for tunes? I am looking to buy a blue tooth communication system for myself and a crew that ride atvs. It would be cool to banter back and forth. No tunes needed.

I use Fuze for my custom molds now, best stuff I have found, I am particular on my headphones. I need them to go to 11.

[Itsa Little CrOoked]

I don't know about Fuze.

I've used a Starcom 1 for inter-helmet comm and don't care for it too much. It was better for phone, but I've idled it for the time being. I don't do much helmet to helmet at this stage of my life.

I also have a MotoComm which I'm sure is also version 1. I like it better for cell phone connections.

I don't use monitors in custom earmolds for either of these solutions, but it would be extremely easy to do so. When I ride longer distances, I use both my Custom monitors with the Amazing Mold Putty molds, and my speaker headset at the ready for a cell call. You just have to turn down the audio feed if a call comes in. A little hinkey, but I'm so tight they'll have to screw me into the ground at the cemetery.

I do like my MotoComm unit. Last I knew, they were at one of these numbers 877-624-6869 or 425-295-0390. Small company, but I did find a website: http://www.motocomm.com/ They were top bang for the buck when I purchased 5 or so years ago.

[Gilligan]

He tells the wife that the coms are "broken" so he doesn't have talk to her.

I kid, I kid!!!