For anyone who gets neck / shoulder pain

Not sure if this is helpful to anyone, but it might help some of you who get pain at the side of the neck / top of the shoulder on your plucking side. For a while I've noticed that playing some basses made my neck hurt in that specific spot, while I was absolutely fine with other basses.

My posture / playing position was ok, the straps were all the same length, weight / type of strap had nothing to do with it, it happened whether I was sitting or standing, so I couldn't figure out why it was happening - until earlier today, when I grabbed my most comfortable bass (a Fender Jazz) and measured how high my plucking hand was from the ground in sitting position. Long story short, turns out that my right hand sits about 2 inches higher on the jazz bass (because of the larger body) than on the other basses, and because the basses rest on my leg when I play, it never occurred to me that my plucking hand ends up at slightly different heights depending on the bass body type. So I just shortened the straps on the other basses to match where my plucking hand sits on the jazz, and lo and behold, no more weird neck pain. Didn't think an inch or two of arm placement would make much difference, turns out it does.

 

I guess everyone has a different take on this, I’m always surprised by how much our physical features affect our playing, and how even the smallest differences in our anatomy can change what we perceive as comfortable or painful. Hope you manage to recover from the injury and you don’t have to tough it out for too long!