ARGH!!! My fingers!!!

[malmapus]

So had a really bad day at work, came home and something just clicked. I decided to dig out my amp, few pedals and guitar and just jam. Haven't played in a bit and it shows lol. But still could keep up with a bit of my favorites (Black Crowes, Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young / Pearl Jam), then wife calls from the airport to give me a status on her flight home tonight. Right as I put down the guitar and pick up the phone my finger tips are THROBBING.

lol I'm going to be paying for not playing I can tell :)

[pepperbear]

1. I'll bet those

calluses come back in no time

[ProfessorGAC]

Oh, That'll Happen!

One of the reasons i was a pretty good guitar teacher is that i taught myself guitar as a 2nd instrument when i was 20. After 16 years of piano (at that point) i did not remember what it was like for piano to be hard.

But, when i was teaching guitar, i remembered what it was like for my fingers to hurt from the strings, and even that i couldn't get them to go where i wanted them, even though i obviously had the dexterity. The technique was just so different than what i was used to.

But, keep plugging away. The callouses come back REALLY fast. I know a guy that did the same as you. Just never picked up the guitar for a year or so, until my friend and i shamed him into playing again. (LOL!) His callouses came back in a couple of weeks.

Hang in there.
The Professor

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Sorry. Dupe

.

[freethought]

3. Oh, suck it up!

Complain when your fingers start bleeding.
:headbang:

[Sammy Pepys]

4. Sounds like you need to go up a gauge

I'd suggest .013s. You might pass out from the pain, but pain = tone.

[freethought]

5. .013s? Wow! Didn't Stevie Ray Vaughn

use the .013 guage strings? I am going to be upgrading one guitar from .009s to .010s to hear the tonal difference.
Hey, guess I'll try the next guage up too!.

[FogerRox]

6. I remember a guy yrs back playing an SG with like ...16's

I liked the sound.

[Sammy Pepys]

7. I use .011s on pretty much everything

Though I'll occasionally throw a set of .010s on something for the heck of it. I did use .012s for a while and liked the stiffness and overall feel, but I actually seemed to lose a bit of the "zing" that I like and couldn't be bothered to widen the nut slots to accomodate them properly.

[FogerRox]

8. yeah I went to 11,s too, 10's seem a bit weak

I tend to waste that hi "E" too often.

[bucknaked]

9. I typically go 3-5 days without playing....

...and that's both bass and guitar (I'm originally a bass player, just more recently tried my luck at the guitar).

Thing is, in those rare moments, I'll stumble onto something (probably by accident), and it'll either be a riff that sounds like a song I know and like, or something that I think might sound good, and I'll work on it all night, until I either get it, or am too tired to go on.

Anyway, the next day, my fingertips are usually in pain (left index finger, mostly), shiney and most likely stained from metallic "old-string" dirt.

BTW, anybody else find that if you're trying to learn something, spent a lot of time on it, then you take a break for awhile and come back, on one the first attempts after the break, you nail it?