This is a problem I've dealt with over the last two decades. For me, the music part is over, since I discovered (when I started playing viola) that no glasses makes music reading easiest for me!
But before my eyes progressed to this state, I was (actually about 15 years ago) just about where you are, Anthony. This was my situation and solution: I have been an electronics technician all of my professional life. As time has progressed, the components, and the markings on the components, have become smaller. Additionally, engineers have placed things in cases in more-and-more bizarre locations, like at the top near the front, so they can only be accessed through a port placed low on the back. Usually, this is done on units which cannot be turned upside down. I got my first set of trifocals in 1994, and was told I should have had them since I was 15. (the news was shocking, but not surprising.) Knowing that I had to be functional in electronics and still wanting to be able to read music, I chose the 'executive' style of trifocal, and got the doctor to give me a prescription which raised the trifocal lines a centimeter and spread the center (medium-distance) part to about 15mm. This left about 50% for distance, and split the bottom half nearly 50-50 between close-up (~40cm) and music-reading/front panel/computer reading at about 150cm. Then, I added a Bauch & Lomb magnifier, which clipped to the right earpiece of my glasses for fine electronics work.Close-up work, I found, rarely needed full-3D vision, but being able to focus on something the size of the grains in my fingernail was important because the lettering on surface-mount components (6, 8 and 0-with-a-slash, particularly) was hard to read at lesser magnifications! The magnifier has two lenses, 7x and 4x, which can be used alone or together. Later, I found that I did need 3D vision at great magnifications, and I found plastic clip-on binary magnifiers in the MSC catalog (similar ones should be in Grainger and McMaster-Carr). They come in one of five magnifications, and I got 3diopter and 5diopter. 3 was good enough for most small work, 5 was good for surface-mount under 0603...and weighed enough to pull the glasses off my face! Most musicians won't care a whit for these kinds of magnifiers, but I mention them because luthiers might be. Anyway, the wide center (mid-range music-reading) lens worked very well for reading music, even when playing the larger double-reeds (which generally make it hard to move your head around while playing.) I also got a set of reading-only glasses, and a set of distance-only, and found out something interesting. (disclaimer: I've been wearing glasses since I was 1 year old. They go on when I wake up, and come off when the light goes off at night.) I found that the full-lens glasses were disconcerting (making them both distracting for reading and for driving) because the sections which _didn't_ have the _other_ lenses were hard for my eye/brain combo to focus through. Generally, acclimation to the different lens-layout took about an hour, and my commute is about that long. (It is also a bit too long to have to go before a rehersal or into a rehersal being blindish.) So for my purposes, the compromise of a widened music-computer reading lens was good. I hope this information is helpful. If someone wants to order the clip-on magnifiers and is in a country I can ship to but doesn't have access because MSC, McMaster or Grainger don't ship there, I think I can arrange some way to help. Ray On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Anthony Hind <agno3ph...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Dear Lutenists > I was having problems sending messages from my usual mail, so I > am trying out my Yahoo Mail. > Rather than just making a test, I wonder whether any of you can help me > relating to suitable glasses for reading music. > I understand that the usual progressive glasses are almost useless, > because of their narrow field of view, and it has been suggested that I > try degressive lenses (close to middle distance). > Have any of you tried these? I was told that they maintain an excellent > field of view, and could be as good, or better than single purpose > (music reading or computer) lenses. > This obviously means, I will also need either long view glasses or > progressive lenses for normal outdoor use. > Any experience with these degressive lenses would be of interest to me. > Regards > Anthony > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
