Grimalkin

Inverted wrist from 11.43, 12.39 to see what happens to your finger span and mobility when the thumb moves up:

Is it amateur dramatics night?

An exception rather than the rule.

I can name you far more pro bassists who don't.

A recognised qualified tutor, not this...

I think you are trying to validate poor technique because one guy didn't mention it... Find me a tutor teaching that as a common muting technique.

Find me a teacher teaching that, I've had about 8 over the course of decades and not one mentioned or advised it once. They all worked in the business, session work for names/broadcasters etc.

One tutor is not enough of a sample size...

Bobby is a pick player, so he doesn't have the benefit of right hand muting on the E string while working above it on the D and G strings in the way he's playing (the same reason slappers sometimes use the thumb to mute), bringing the thumb in now and again works for him. How many people do you know who play like Bobby Vega?

He didn't tell you it was a good idea either, or he would have.

Do you think Jamerson's one fingered 'hook' should be taught to everyone because it worked for him? Find me one tutor who recommends playing with your thumb over the neck as the OP describes: "All of the time..." There are occasions for use, I don't and I've never met a tutor who advises muting like that in all the time I've worked as a musician.

Go to any bass tutor worth their salt and they will tell you the same thing.

Sans body it could make a novel guitar neck back-scratcher I suppose, or a deluxe length kitchen grater, that would provide a good run for ginger and such.

As poster mario_buoninfante, it isn't a case of absolutes. If you are playing repetitive lines at the bottom end of the neck, the thumb tends to move up the back of the neck to make things more comfortable. Having the thumb centred constantly at the bottom end of the neck, sets up an uncomfortable wrist angle if that's going to be the position for a prolonged time. If you play around the centre of the neck where it widens out, playing say over four frets, the common maj/min scale shape, then you need the span, the arching and the full length of your fingers. My thumb is usually at the centre line of the back of the neck or just below to allow everything forward. Thumb over the top of the neck constricts all of that, plus you are playing on the pads of your fingers not the tips (see Marcus pic) and your fingers tend to fret at an angle, not so much parallel to the fret but across them. If you want to get nimble, you won't make it gripping the neck. The idea is to be free-floating, you'll need less pressure fretting without the grip too.

Keep it simple. I started my collection of tin foil milk bottle tops during the lock-downs. They each feature the beak indentations of various birds attempting to access the cream atop of the milk. My favourite one was made by a blackbird, as I actually witnessed him attempting it.

It reminds me of Gulliver's visit to The Grand Academy of Lagado... "I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms. The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper "to give no offence, which would be highly resented;" and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel. I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish. There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider." Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels, 1726.

You can see the score by that pic of Marcus, thumb over, all the finger length moves back.

A few slappers adopt it on occasion and more, if you're on the thumb, right hand muting is scarce. There's a lot more to do with the left hand muting.

It grips the neck, but more importantly if you take your thumb high at the back of the neck, it takes away the reach length of your fingers at the front. Difficult to arch, difficult to span. Look at the shape of the hand from the side as you move the thumb up way beyond the centre line, you're left with stubs.

I ain't not never seen nothing like it. I don't know why you would want to...

There is a different connection with instruments though isn't there, a more personal connection. "No, it's NOT like any other love This one is different because it's us!..."

My favourite Xmas ad ditty so far, I like the slightly sardonic '50s vocal delivery, and the dissonance of the interval sang for the word "Glee", unusual, a #5 I think.

At the end of the day, when you're on your last legs and not long for this world, possessions won't mean much at all, memories and experiences will.

There's a new collection in town...