When you are very young, let's say living out your teens and early 20's, there is a curious human temptation to believe that you are somewhat immortal, and immune to death and aging. Very soon though someone in you age group either dies or becomes very ill and the bloom of youth begins to fade. However, a great deal of damage can be done to one's physical and mental health during the "immmortal "period.

I read how many of the icons of music, guitar players now, upon reaching their 40's and 50's are near totally deaf. Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Pete Townsend, Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, to name a few, have all realized severe hearing damage and the worse cases involve the horrible confluent condition "tinnitus" which is a permenant ringing in the ears that sounds like crickets churping constantly in your head.

Having lived through this stage and suffering a great deal of hearing loss with tinnitus, it pains me to see youg folks jamming away at mega volumes, especially in confined low ceiling basements etc, oblivious to the permanent damage that they are inflicting on their hearing. It's a horrible price to pay. I wish I had been warned. Or maybe I was, but just too immortal to care!

You young guns take care!!! Old age is a lot about paying for your actions as a youth. Take care of your hearing. Sustained noise above 85 decibels will destroy your hearing.

Thank you, sir, for the words of wisdom! Obviously everyone here has a real passion for music. It would be a shame for anyone to inflict damage on themselves that would prevent them from fully enjoying that passion. Especially since it's so easily preventable.

All of my bandmates and I always wear earplugs when we rehearse or perform. It's a necessity to protect our hearing (especially with my bandmate's 85 watt Twin Reverb cranked). It also helps us perform better since we can actually hear all the subtleties of our performance.

I am glad that when I was gigging 3 out of 4 of us had construction experience. We actually used earplugs, especially when playing in a confined rehearsal spot. Our bass player who wouldn't wear 'em has considerable hearing damage, the rest of us minor(though i am convinced i do have hearing loss, i don't have tinnitus, and the loss is minor.) we still cranked the tube amps, but at least we had some protection. Nowadays with small wattage tube amps,and high quality amp modelers and so many alternatives there is no excuse to be practicing at dangerous volumes.

really for a lot of reasons these new smaller high quality practice tube amps and the modeling amps are one of the best innovations in a long time.

-great tones at non-eviction volumes
-lower cost tube amplification (still not as cheap as solid state alternatives, but if you want that tube sound..)
- can get that creamy almost breaking up tube sweet spot without endangering your hearing.

All in all, a good time to play at home, so many more quality options than when I started out. to play quietly, or at a budget you had to make far more tonal comprimises than now.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Me too. Same thing. Great public service announcement. I have seriously damaged my hearing. Tinnitus is no joke. If all you want is ringing in your ears play loud and don't protect your hearing. I came from a time of 100 watt stacks and combos cranked to outrageous levels. I usually need some sort of sound in a room to offset the ringing. It's really horrible.

Guy's and Gal's it's truly maddening and so easy to prevent. Just wear earplugs. There are attenuator plugs on the market. Hearo's will cut 30dbs off the loudness.
http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/ ... sku=421186

Don't forget Ipods, MP3 players and using any headphones at high volume levels can damage your hearing.

living in between the paths for the north and west runways (or is it east and south) at O'Hare International, if you aren't hollerin' I'm probably not hearing, you can crank it to 11 and maybe compete with the 707's.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Could you speak up a little louder.....seriously

Don't let it happen to you!

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

To ALL you Young'uns, READ THIS TWICE or MORE:



Thank you for this extremely valuable post.

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You dig?

I was tough once too

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

Wow.

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Oneal Lane speaks the truth folks... but me, I don't know any different about hearing loss since I was born with it... age of 2 it was discovered, and from then on I have worn hearing aids. When jamming in the bands of my youthful days, I at least had the capability of turning my aids way down to a comfort level (and I always did), thus allowing me to hear what was being played.

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Limber Fingers to all you Guitar Players...

Regards,
Bratt Scovil

www.myspace.com/brattscovil

Great Great Advice and an added plus for everyone taking it serious and no one wisecracking. Everyone thinks it cant happen to them till it happens.

Great post and absolutely true. Like 63supro, we'd do all we could in the late sixties to make Blue Cheer sound tame. What a bunch of dumbasses. Mike

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Most of us are guilty of: "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

When I saw Blue Cheer at the Fillmore East (yea, I'm old), the first 10 rows were roped off as a safety concern. The reason I was told was that several audience members in these rows had bleeding ears after the last show.

The term, "welding your amp", meaning, turning all the knobs to '10' is also attributed to Blue Cheer. They literally spot welded their amps' pots to the face of their Marshalls while all turned up to '10'.

I ran into their drummer a few years ago. He is still a phenomenal player but his hearing for the most part is long gone.

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You dig?

Dumbass is an understatement. Sometimes I would run my Twin through a 4x12 daisy chain it to my Bandmaster and boost the front end with two Electro Harmonix LPB-1 linear power boosters driving the second LPB-1 to distortion with the first. That was part of my live rig. I was the moronic dumbass. The problem back then was the PA systems were horrible. Still no excuse for wrecking my hearing.

23 years of jet engines and artillery rounds did the damage to my ears. Believe me - tinnitus sucks. On top of that, I have hearing aids I wear on occasion. I've lost a huge portion of the middle range frequencies of my hearing capability.

I keep my amps down low and wear ear plugs for a lot of day-to-day activities - mowing the lawn, etc.

It ain't no fun...

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Old age and treachery will win every time over youth and enthusiasm.

"You can never have too many Tele's." A quote from my Sweetwater Sales Engineer