Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Over the years I was blessed to have played with four very good drummers. The basic element of a band for me starts in the rhythm section. If they can provide a solid foundation, then my work is so much easier.

No other way! If the rhythm section is having an off night, then it's rough on everyone.

My band mates were extremely professional. Off nights were strictly reserved for rehearsals. That's the only time that any of us were allowed to have timing issues or to make mistakes. Rehearsals are where you hone your craft.

Mine are most assurely caused by bands and cars. But you will get the ringing with age anyway no matter what ear plugs you wear.
But I really got a kick out of my mother in law one day. My wife came home after visiting her and told me about it. She said that was Ma was saying that her head was ringing and she wanted my wife to lean in close and listen LOL..
My little neice said her's is from standing too close to my amps and not listening to me telling her to wear ear plugs around the amps and the loud cars at the tracks.
But I told her that a lot of hers has to do too with always having those headphones pumped up in volume stuck in her ears too.
Significantly she is nineteen. Whats significant about that age is that say now that ninety percent of the population has ear ringing by that age caused mostly by headphones.

Thanks Dan,

The story about your mother-in-law is very funny!! LOL She reminds me of my mother-in-law.

Painters go blind, musicians go deaf...you're bound, over the span of a lifetime, to wear out the piece of gear you use the most.

The village gamelan players in Bali, when given the chance to record their own groups, will inevitably push the recording levels into the red to the point of distortion. They have, in effect, 'spiked' the frequencies of their particular orchestra out of their hearing spectrum.

Although I've been playing gamelan for seventeen years now, and rock-n-roll for more than thirty, I've never worn earplugs while playing. (Okay, there was that one band with the two Les Pauls through Marshall stacks...I did have to resort to protection for that one). My first time in Bali, I contracted an inner ear infection that came very close to killing me. When I got back down to the tourist zone to see a 'Western' trained doctor, she told me that my eardrums are abnormally deep inside my skull, rendering me susceptible to dangerous infections. A drag in that regard, but it does explain my relative imperviousness to loud noises...