Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I saw Brian Wilson at the Park West in Chicago when he came around for his Smile tour a few months back. It was a good show. He must have had at least a 16-piece band. He mostly sat behind a keyboard, but for one or two tunes he played a white Fender bass with his thumb and held onto the tug bar with his fingers just like in the above photo. Not the most impressive bass playing I've ever seen, but now I can officially say that I've seen somebody using a tug bar!

You can also officially say that you saw a genuine pop music genius. His bass playing was only to keep the BBs in their "combo vocal group" image. Carol Kaye played on many, many of his records, as we know.

It's funny, back in the '70s everyone was removing their tugbar/finger rests and now we are all putting them back on!

What's next? Brylcreem?

This is the first thing I got when I Googled Marc's name:

http://teachers.net/gazette/MAR03/fyi2.html

See Jeff, it goes to show we all want the older features back.

Harley Davidson Digs back to the 50s.

Gibson has all there late 50s early 60s reissues.

Fender the same thing.

They all go back to there heritage for new models thats what we want too.....................

Style/fashion tends to be cyclical. We are largely nostalgic and always think things were better/easier/cooler/etc way back when.

Wasnt it there because of the fact that when the bass guitar 1st came out it was mainly guitarist playing them if they couldnt get guitar gigs. Sence the other styles werent really around yet... They had the rest there to help them out. As time went on it switched to the top for a thumb rest. Then they kind of werent used at all and ditched. I think. Isnt that the whole deal with the mutes as well? Because guitarist couldnt mute the bass like we do now? Honestly I cant see where I would ever use the mutes haha. But thats just me.

I guess also its the feeling that everything made back in time was more personal,
less mass produced They weren't being made to be collectible,
they were to fill a need, somebody of long ago put there skill craftsmanship and pride into the instruments of old.
We all want to feel that mojo. Sort of like having a 57 Chevy.Even if its a reissue.

those wonderful obsolete finger rests ...

Jacob, most electric bass players back then were coming over from playing uprights. Early on, the idea was to play an electric in an upright postion. The player would hold the bass with the headstock pointing to the ceiling with the plucking hand on the tug bar and the thumb on the strings. That is why Fender put strap buttons on the headstocks of their basses until about 1966. Few players kept that style though, opting for finger or pick styles that would put the bass in a more or less horizontal position. Fender moved the tug bar above the strings sometime in the 70's and Rickenbacker removed it all together. Today the finger rest or tug bar is vestigial. Very few people use them anymore.

The thing is, though, now, if there's a finger rest, it's ACTUALLY a thumbrest, meaning it's above the strings, in a place that someone would anchor their thumb when fingerpicking. I see custom basses all the time with thumbrests (usually made out of some REALLY expensive wood so that they can charge more), and when a bass doesn't have a pickguard, that makes complete sense to me. I might install one on the bass I bought on eBay (it doesn't have a pickguard), but I'm not sure how it would look. I'll have to decide after I've played it after I've put it back together.