Fingertips suddenly getting tender.

Squonk

I have been experiencing this a lot lately. Play guitar for a couple of hours and my fingertips are hectically sore. Sometimes I have to have a days rest for them to recover.

I played them in long years ago and this is the first time I am experiencing this since I started playing.

anyone else experience this?

AlanRatcliffe

Are you practising more or practising new things? You to push too hard when working on new stuff, same as when you started.

Bob-Dubery

:-\ :-\ :-\

Squonk wrote: I have been experiencing this a lot lately. Play guitar for a couple of hours and my fingertips are hectically sore. Sometimes I have to have a days rest for them to recover.

I played them in long years ago and this is the first time I am experiencing this since I started playing.

anyone else experience this?

Not right now. But maybe the action on the guitar you are playing has got higher. Or maybe you've moved from one guitar to another and the actions are different. Have you changed string gauges?

Hardness of the fingertips seems to me to not be a binary thing. It's an adaption to what you routinely do. Years ago I thought my fingers were nice and hard from playing guitar every day. I can't remember exactly but back then I think I had 11s on my acoustic and 10s on the electric. Then I played bass guitar for an afternoon. Ouch!

I think if I went from 12s back to 13s now then my fingertips would feel the difference for a while.

When I got my Smoothtalker I had 13s on that. Now 13s were what I played at that time. But I felt it when I played that guitar. The action was high. After various adjustments it got better. So setup has an effect too.

PeteM

I find that I can bruise the index finger of my left hand quite easily when playing numbers with open E and A chords on my acoustic guitar. The reason is that I push too hard on the third string at the first and second frets. I've now taken to half barring the A with my ring finger, particularly when playing 4 hour long gigs.
I don't think we'll ever escape bruising... it's an occupational hazard. ?

Squonk

Thanks for the replies. I might have worked out what the problem is. I have been incorporating a lot more legato and sliding and hammerons into my routine.

The sliding between frets is the culprit. Hopefully callouses will form on top of the original callouses. Hardly any fingerprints left.

Thanks

domhatch

Squonk wrote: Thanks for the replies. I might have worked out what the problem is. I have been incorporating a lot more legato and sliding and hammerons into my routine.

The sliding between frets is the culprit. Hopefully callouses will form on top of the original callouses. Hardly any fingerprints left.

Thanks

keep it up. before you know it, you'll be a man in black. (of the will smith as opposed to johnny cash variety.)