Model them at home, protect you at the range, Decibullz provides affordable custom hearing protection.
What Decibullz Offers:
- Foam exterior molds to the outer ear.
- Offers complete protection, rated 31 NRR.
- Remoldable, if the perfect fit isn't accomplished the first time.
“Custom-molded earplugs, 31 NRR rated, for $30.” Standing at a booth on range day at the SHOT Show and hearing this, I was certain either my hearing was finally calling it quits after decades of shooting—or I was having a stroke. “You mean $300, right?” The answer, with a smile, was “No, $30. And you can custom fit them at home.”
OK, now I was hooked. “Tell me more.”
The custom-fitted ear protection is a clever product from Decibullz, and they’re a product of modern chemistry. The plugs start shape in a more-or-less earplug form. You drop them in boiling water and let them boil away for 5 minutes. You fish them out, let them cool and dry, and then press them into your ears. Obviously, you don’t want boiling-hot anything to be put into your ears. But when they’re cool enough to handle but not fully cooled off, they’re still pliable.
So, you press them for a good, comfortable and secure fit and then let them finish cooling while in place. Once fully cool, they don’t change shape. You now have custom-fit hearing protection that provides up to 31 NRR protection.
Oh, and the best part? If you don’t get it right the first time, fire up the stove and boil some more water—you can repeat until you have it right. Yep, modern chemistry, a compound that can be shaped at the temperatures we can handle and does so repeatedly, not just a one-time thing.
They come in colors, so you can match your shooting protection to your shooting gear, should you wish.
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Basic, And Beyond
Now, the basic ones for shooting protection aren’t the only option. There are upgrades: You can opt for the Percussive Filter, which dampens the peak impulse of sounds, but it permits the ambient levels to come through.
Then, there are the Professional High Fidelity plugs that use a special filter to lower all frequencies by the same amount, so you don’t have shifts in the sound itself. These are more the kind of plugs musicians would use to protect their hearing from amplifiers and such at concerts, but still permit accurate identification of sound quality.
The Percussive Filter and High Fidelity cost more, but even then they’re only $75 and $100, respectively. They are custom-moldable, just like the basic ones, and come in colors as well.
One of the tiring aspects of my job is lugging around a pile of gear. Each time I go to the range to test, there are guns, ammo, targets, tools, cameras, lights, chronograph, tripods … and lunch. It’s a pile of gun bags and boxes, and the only way I can be sure I have something so basic as hearing protection is to make sure there’s something in every bag I might grab.
Expensive hearing protection means a lot of cost to ensure I’m covered. With Decibullz, I can have a handful of hearing protection at a not-large outlay, and that means a set in a half-dozen different range bags, where they’re all custom-fit and deliver top protection.
Good stuff, and that’s no bullz.
For more information on Decibullz, please visit decibullz.com.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the December 2020 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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