The Manic Mechanic

Created by Train Horns

This is about a 12kHz tone. I can hear it. In fact, it's about the same frequency as my tinnitis, making it that much louder. When I was a wee young 'un (up through my teens) I could hear tones over 22kHz. My high frequency hearing was very sensitive. Thing is, it was more of a curse than anything. Television sets using conventional CRTs use a deflection yoke to scan the electron beam across the screen. The horizontal sweep frequency is about 15kHz. Television sets in use around my youth were generally old tube-based sets and even modern ones were rather inefficient. The scanning frequency would generally escape the set in the form of a high pitched tone. I could tell where a television was playing even of the sound was off and I could not see it. Living in a wooded area filled with crickets chirping gave me a loud cacophony to lull me to sleep. Even having these huge floppy ears just made things worse.

Being the rocker I am and given my love for loud music, my experimenting with audio and building amplifiers and such even before my teens, topping it off with untold hundreds of car audio wattage has taken it's toll on my once bat-like hearing. But a lot of that is also just getting old too.

No irony is lost in that hearing test being sponsored by a train horn site. I plan on fitting a set of train horns to my new truck eventually to help deal with other people's lack of hearing ability. More to the point, their inattentiveness from yacking on cell phones and being plugged in to their iPods.

Now, knock off that racket and get off my goddamn lawn.