Topband: how to hear through static crashes?

[Bruce]

- otherwise the static crashes will
> blow your eardrums out with the high AGC threshold.

Years ago in the late 1990's,  early 2000's when I was doing serious 
contesting I found a good remedy. An old ARRL handbook had a
diagram of two diodes (one for positive peaks, the other for negative peaks) 
biased with  batteries, plus variable  pots, to clamp headphone audio for 
maximum confortable level. Built it up and worked well.
73
Bruce-K1FZ