Jafo - Posted - 06/30/2012:  17:11:20

Coming from the banjo (I just picked up the mando as a diversion, honest), I had fine conditioning of my fingertips on my left hand, or so I thought. The mando, however, is a meat eating machine (tm) and my fingers and the paltry calluses I had built, turned into pulp and reformed as little pads of semi-hard concrete. I simultaneously lost most of the 'normal' feeling between my finger tip and the first joint. I don't mind the hard skin, but the sensation of having a glob of crazy glue on my fingertips along with something hard packed up under my fingernails is driving me just a little closer to 'full tilt crazy' than I was just a few blissful weeks ago. (It is fair to say that I was never very far away anyway.)

 My question is, will this ever go away or 'smooth out' as long as I continue to be seduced by the instrument of the Devil himself, or do I need to quit cold turkey to get back to normal sensations? Some of my best friends are mando players (really) and they tell me this will subside. But I have suspicions about the smirk they always display when they say this.

 Please be honest, will I always have this weird feeling in my fingertips, or will it go away? If it will go away, will I also loose the ability to feel anything with my fingers ever again? The banjo is much easier on the body parts, for sure (OK, it's a LOT rougher on the back than a mando). A much more gentile instrument indeed. (No offense intended.)

 Of course, on the other hand, I can now crack ice cubes just by tapping my middle finger on them and when I drum my fingers on a table my left hand provides a nice "tipity-tipity" sound and my right hand provides the base line. So maybe it's all good.

Tom

Buttonwood Bob - Posted - 06/30/2012:  18:58:54

Most of all, don't let your excellent sense of humor get callused. I experienced what you report, and indeed it went away. First I felt that I needed to build some calluses. It was a painful beginning. I remember forcing myself to press hard to make a clean sounding cord. Today, the calluses appear to be gone and so has the pain. Introspection is all I can offer. I *think* that as my fingering got more precise, I didn't need to press as hard...by far. That's the best explanation I can come up with. It goes without saying that the first consideration is the string height, but given a good set up, I join your friends who tell you their is comfort after the pain. I find it interesting now that playing a little every day, I don't have deep grooves in my finger tips like I used to get. There is no question but those tightly wound strings are hard, but adjusted to the proper height, you don't have to press all that hard. I shall be interested in what others report. I jumped on this right away, because I could identify with your experience. You could say, I feel your pain. It's not forever.

Jafo - Posted - 06/30/2012:  19:15:11

Thanks Bob, my medical training tells me that it will even out eventually (but when it happens to YOU, all that training goes right out the window.). Your comments confirm that. Yes, I too have been clamping fairly hard to get a good note, but since the 'pea gravel' fingertips showed up, I have not had to work as hard. Actually, it surprised me how nice the notes came out even when I thought I had 'missed the string'. I have only been feeding this devil for about 3 weeks now, averaging 2 hours a day with more on the weekends (today was about 4-5 hours) and I had hoped for the pain to go away, now that it has, and I have these 'clumps'; on my fingertips, I am just wondering if the pain was better. (For any medical folks reading this, it's like having a selective digital neuropathy.)
Oh the joys of our music!

dmiller - Posted - 06/30/2012:  19:25:58

I've picked on guitar/ banjo/ fiddle/ mandolin/ and bass for 40 years.

The worst times (in my "picking life") was when I had " feelings" in the fingertips.

"Feelings" belong in the heart, and the brain - -  not fingertips.     

(P.S. - - -)  My Dad was a chemist, and got to the point where he could pick up red hot beakers

                  right off of the Bunsen burner (for whatever experiment he was doing), with no pain.

                  If he were alive today, he'd agree about heart/ brain/ fingertips/ and feeling.  

Edited by - dmiller on 06/30/2012 19:31:44

14strings - Posted - 06/30/2012:  19:36:30

I am having a similar experience.  I have bounced a round a little. Guitar, mando, fiddle, guitar, fiddle.  I have noticed that my calluses change shape every time I change which instrument I'm focusing on.  My latest thing is I am trying to learn some double stop and third position techniques on the fiddle.  This has caused my middle finger callus produce that hard cap you describe, and rather than hampering my feeling I think the particularly hard callus is bruising the tissue under it causing it to be painful to play.  I tried "softening" them with some kinda hand product my wife had, but no luck with that.  What seems to be working for me is using her emory board to remove some of the callus.  You just have to go slow and careful so as not to get into sensitive tissue, and so as not to remove so much hard-earned  callus that you have to rebuild them.  You should be able to just take off enough callus get back to your level of sensitivity.

bradley    

UsuallyPickin - Posted - 07/01/2012:  05:20:12

Well there is a product called guitar hands that my son, a guitar and mandolin player, swears by. I use an emory board for shaping calluses when they get " out of hand" LOL. Really consider getting your mandolin set up , neck adjustment fret dress sut and bridge adjustment or work. It will make the beastie easier to play. Bob gives good advice in this and being careful not to over grip / over play your instrument. Tension in your hand tells you you are doing something wrong and long term will hurt you.... relax and enjoy the ride. Banjos are truly easy on the fingers of the left hand, mandolin string length and size and number make it more than a degree or two of difficulty in difference between the two. THe good news is that mandolins are tuned in fifths and not to a chord so there are repeating patterns and shapes everywhere you look. Enjoy the process it only gets better. R/

coelhoe - Posted - 07/01/2012:  07:24:50

If I am going to be away for two to five weeks, I usually carry my fiddle with me for practice. But I know that this means my calluses will get soft and small.So, first thing on return I get out the mando and put in a half hour or more for the next few days and the toughened pads come right back. I think it is those double strings that do it. More effective than guitar or banjo.

Buttonwood Bob - Posted - 07/01/2012:  07:31:11

On the lighter side--Years and years ago when I was a senior in high school, I played a stand up bass well into the wee hours at the local Lions Club, or was it the Moose?  Instead of pain in my fingering hand, I got blisters on two fingers on my right hand.  I was slated to pitch in a big game two days later.  I had already been admonished about playing these big gigs.  I wrapped my fingers with flesh colored gauze, kept my hand in my glove, or buried in the rosin bag  and pitched a "one hitter."  Now it can be told.  I still have the write up in a scrapbook somewhere in the attic that lauded the incredible array of "stuff" I had on the ball that day,.  I never had the nerve to do it again in later years, but flesh colored, sticky gauze beats spitballs any day !  This string has me wondering--have I killed the feeling in my finger tips?  I don't have noticeable calluses, nor do my finger tips hurt after playing an hour or so??

TI_USER - Posted - 07/01/2012:  09:39:06

First of all, Jafo, I do appreciate your sense of humor about this.  We have all gone through the finger pain of learning mandolin.  The higher string tension on the mandolin makes it painful to go through the initial learning period.  You will get used to the calluses and, believe me, it's better than the pain if you don't have them.  I have been playing mandolin for about 35 years so I haven't had fingerprints since I was a teenager.  However, the worst finger pain for me was from bass.  I play bass regularly in a band now and have for several years, but there were times when I didn't play for a few months at a time.  I was playing gigs quite often on mandolin and, as a result, the bass went un-played for a very long time.   Then one time I had to do a gig with bass at a wedding and playing for 4 hours.  The pain and blisters on BOTH hands didn't go away for a week and a half.  I'll never let that happen again.  I don't go for a few days without getting the bass out and maintaining calluses for both instruments.

Peter Summers - Posted - 07/01/2012:  16:14:32

As others have noted, you might be gripping too hard, and maybe your strings are too high. I have the strings on both my fiddles and mandolins set at no more than 1/8 off the frets - the lower the better, IMO, so long as they don't buzz..

But look at it this way, all artists must suffer for their art. The better the art, the more the suffering - perhaps that's why I have never suffered much after the first couple of weeks of building calluses.

Jafo - Posted - 07/01/2012:  18:19:42

Thanks all. Well, if pain equals art, then I must be a friggin' master. So that's not it. Yeah, the action could come down a little, but I don't want to start messing with it to subtract from my playing time. I had a couple of accomplished players look it over and they suggest that it can be brought down a slight amount and I should try to tighten the rod to straighten the neck a bit more, also, very slight. But it is a new instrument and not all that far out. I will be putting some flat wound strings on it and see how they work and perhaps adjust the action at that time (I need to shorten the bridge to bring it down. The adjustment is bottomed out.)
I only grip hard enough to get a good ring out of the string, but yeah, sometimes I make up for poor finger placement by squeezing really hard, that habit is going away as my aim gets better. Originally I got this as a diversion, but now that I have taught myself one tune and am already working on a second tune, it is turning out to be fun, and so much easier than the banjo in many ways. I still can't do that tremolo thing though and it's frustrating. I'm just playing around. No pressure, no goals, just having fun, and as a side benefit, someday I can play with some of my banjo friends. I've only been working on this thing for 3 weeks or so and I guess I can stick with it a little longer and see how it goes.
Thanks,
Tom

TI_USER - Posted - 07/01/2012:  18:41:07

Flatwound strings is a excellent idea.  I've used flatwound strings for the past 15 years and they are much easier on the fingers.  For the last 11 months I have been using D'Addario FW-74 strings and I can't recommend them highly enough.  As a matter of fact I have had the same set on my mandolin since last August.  I gig with them regularly and they still sound great.  They are much lighter tension than the average medium gauge bronze wound string.  Flatwounds plus lowering your action might make a big difference.

mandogryl - Posted - 07/02/2012:  07:48:52

I agree with the above, all of it. The pain will go away, assuming your instrument is properly set up (ie action not too high).
Those pairs are brutal at first. I actually played with the pairs off and played singles for awhile when the pain was too much.
But after some months it went away.
I also agree wholeheartedly with flat wound strings.

Terry Allan Hall - Posted - 07/08/2012:  18:51:42

quote:

---

Originally posted by coelhoe

If I am going to be away for two to five weeks, I usually carry my fiddle with me for practice. But I know that this means my calluses will get soft and small.So, first thing on return I get out the mando and put in a half hour or more for the next few days and the toughened pads come right back. I think it is those double strings that do it. More effective than guitar or banjo.

---

 Agreed...if I only play 6-string or banjo, my callouses get soft, while mandolin  and/or 12-string builds 'em right up!

Jafo - Posted - 07/09/2012:  02:59:15

SO at this point I am about 3 weeks in and the calluses are firmed up and the pain has gone almost completely. I am able to put in whatever amount of playing in a day that I want to and I have been averaging 1-2 hours on weekdays with more on the weekends. I haven't put the flatwounds on yet as I need to do some bridge work and want do it all at once. I had the last 5 days off and I probably played 3-4 hours a day, even though I had a banjo lesson in there and put in several hours on that. I find now that my fingers are getting tired, or should I say 'worn out'. After several hours I have a lot of trouble getting the notes to ring and I miss the fret a little and the strength isn't there. I guess this is normal too and should pass, is that correct? The next 7 days are busy for me, so I will lose a lot of playing time, but after that I am off to Grey Fox for 6 days. So maybe I need a little break to rest up?

Tom

JMalmsteen - Posted - 08/09/2012:  08:20:41

Haven't felt my fingertips on 20 years from the guitar playing and now the banjo, fiddle, and mandolin playing. I would rather play my banjo for hours than feel my fingertips. It's a trade off. If you stop playing you will lose your calluses and your fingers will go back to normal after a while. Your choice. it's worth the sacrifice. I can't feel much with four fingertips on my left hand and I would be sad if I did have feeling in them because I wouldn't be able to play my instruments. I remember back to learning guitar as a little kid and having to start with nylon strings to get used to them. The first time I played mandolin, my fingers became so shredded I couldn't play for days on end. Calluses are a blessing.

Jafo - Posted - 08/12/2012:  09:42:17

Well, 7 weeks in and the finger pain is no longer a real issue. I lowered the action a few weeks back, put on the flat-wounds (Like the sound much better), and have been playing just about every day. This last week we were on vacation and I spent a lot of time working on "Devil's Dream", but that will take quite some time for me. The new problem is hand cramping, which is fairly minor. It takes a while to work out the links in the morning. I also am having a hard time feeling the strings on my banjo.  This means I have to change my mental training to play without looking at my hands. It's always something, right?

 Anyway, I am thinking about trying out the fiddle as soon as I can get my hands on one to try. Someday I might find something I can play more than 3 tunes on. I Wish I had realized how much fun music was when I was a kid rather than as I enter the autumn years of my life. Oh well, too soon old, too late smart.

Tom

DannabisAx - Posted - 08/18/2012:  10:42:39

This has happened to me also, on mandolin, and guitar and bass. and it seems that calluses flair up most for me when my technique is young. As I've relaxed on guitar and bass (as teachers had long told me too) the calluses turned in to a slightly thicker than average skin but with feeling and flexibility.

I hope your feeling returns well and wish you the best.

RJM - Posted - 08/21/2012:  06:17:59

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jafo

Coming from the banjo (I just picked up the mando as a diversion, honest), I had fine conditioning of my fingertips on my left hand, or so I thought. The mando, however, is a meat eating machine (tm) and my fingers and the paltry calluses I had built, turned into pulp and reformed as little pads of semi-hard concrete. I simultaneously lost most of the 'normal' feeling between my finger tip and the first joint. I don't mind the hard skin, but the sensation of having a glob of crazy glue on my fingertips along with something hard packed up under my fingernails is driving me just a little closer to 'full tilt crazy' than I was just a few blissful weeks ago. (It is fair to say that I was never very far away anyway.)

 My question is, will this ever go away or 'smooth out' as long as I continue to be seduced by the instrument of the Devil himself, or do I need to quit cold turkey to get back to normal sensations? Some of my best friends are mando players (really) and they tell me this will subside. But I have suspicions about the smirk they always display when they say this.

 Please be honest, will I always have this weird feeling in my fingertips, or will it go away? If it will go away, will I also loose the ability to feel anything with my fingers ever again? The banjo is much easier on the body parts, for sure (OK, it's a LOT rougher on the back than a mando). A much more gentile instrument indeed. (No offense intended.)

 Of course, on the other hand, I can now crack ice cubes just by tapping my middle finger on them and when I drum my fingers on a table my left hand provides a nice "tipity-tipity" sound and my right hand provides the base line. So maybe it's all good.

Tom

---

 Hi Tom,

You can lower the distance (technical term = the action) between the strings and the neck of your mandolin, by turning down the bridge. Mostly this action is much too high on string instruments, so you have to squeeze the strings very hard. If you can’t do this job, go to your local dealer, mostly they do have a repairman or customizer who will help you. If you want to do this yourself: Put marking tape around the feet of your bridge. Loosen up all your strings enough, so you can turn the wheels at the sides of your bridge. Turn both the wheels clockwise to lower your bridge, not too much at once. Check if your bridge is still on his place, that’s why the marking tape. Tune your mandolin, and check if your strings are not rattling against the frets now. Play scales or arpeggio’s on different places on the neck.Still not satisfied?: repeat the proces as written above. Are your strings rattling in open position, or while playing, than you lowered the bridge too much, so you have to turn it up a little. Is the job done, tune your mandolin, and remove the mark tape. To complete the job in a perfect way, you can also check if the the intonation of you mandolin is still good.

Beside this operation you can also try a thinner type of strings. Normally, .10 sets or .11 sets are used on mandolins. I’m also a guitar player always using .009 strings, so I can tell you by experience that these thick mandolin strings felt like cables to me, when I started playing mandolin.

GHS is the only manufacturer who has a thinner set of mandolin strings.ghsstrings.com/strings/mandoli...n-strings Choose the A240 set (.009 .013 .020 .032) and feel the world of difference. I'm very satisfied with these mandolin strings.

I hope you can do something with this info.

 Take care, Robert

 rdenronden.magix.net/public/      

rdenronden.magix.net/public/                            

Jafo - Posted - 08/21/2012:  18:01:44

Thanks RJM, you will note in the above posts that I have already taken your advice, in advance :') However, I found the flat wound strings to do the trick for me as well as make the instrument sound better, to me at least.

 My calluses have smoothed out just as Dan suggested and are now bendable and somewhat of a happy medium with some feeling. I still work on getting the 'correct' level of pressure on the strings without getting that 'thud', but I am getting better at that daily. I get in about 2 hours a day sometimes more and am still working on Devil's Dream. I have the tune down (mostly), but am working on the speed and timing, which this one requires plenty of and is hard to attain and still keep the note separation while getting a clean sound. I am finding the cramping is getting worse and prevents me playing for a few moments at times. Sometimes it really hurts. Now I know I am making a classic 'mistake' in that I cradle the neck in the palm of my left hand. I do not rest my thumb against the back of the neck as is 'proper' because I just can't seem to do this. It doesn't work for me. I lose my place on the neck and can't get the pressure on the strings I require.

 Can I continue in this manner, or am I limiting my forward motion? There must be somebody out there who plays like this and gets away with it, right? I am hoping the cramps are just a symptom of creating new muscle 'skills' and will go away like the horrid oversized calluses. Any thoughts out there?

Tom

somarmd - Posted - 08/30/2012:  05:20:03

I am experiencing the same soreness. I started learning banjo this year and thought my fingers had toughened up. Not so when I started the mandolin last week. My fingers are very sore and I would say much worse than how they felt with the banjo. Now i practice banjo first than move on to mandolin.

Good luck with your progress Tom!

Dave

Kristibob - Posted - 10/25/2012:  12:51:52

I'm a firm believer in "Finger-Ease".  I've used the product for a long, long time..with guitar..and, when I started on mandolin a whole 4 months ago, the Finger-Ease went with me.  It keeps your strings clean, reduces string talk, helps with speed, and, as an added benefit..it keeps your calluses conditioned. It wasn't something the Finger-Ease folks were going for, but it really works. Your calluses stay firm, but soft...no raggedy edges or hard spots.

Mandolin Ant - Posted - 11/21/2012:  09:40:05

Ha Ha! This reminds me SO much about what a friend of mine told me one time. He is a LONG time mandolin player. Really good. Taught me a lot. Probably shaved 5 years off my learning curve by showing me some stuff on the mandolin. I was just starting out and my fingers were killing me! I SO wish I could tell Y'all what he said, but alas, I don't want to get banned from this site. It was brilliant!

dayzee7444 - Posted - 01/15/2013:  02:48:04

yeah I've been playing for a few years and I gots fingertips of steel but if go on a week long hiatus my fingertips start fallin apart like crazy.  That never happened back in the day when I played guitar - strange. I guess the trick is to never ever stop playing lol, thats not such a bad thing.

BingoFuel - Posted - 02/12/2013:  21:06:50

Been playing a couple of years now and the fingers have settled down quite a bit. One thing I did notice this winter, with the lack of blood flow in the callus at -20c they freeze pretty darn quick.

Jafo - Posted - 09/07/2013:  05:58:13

Well, it's hard to believe I started this post about 15 months ago, but for the benefit of those new folks who come along and read these posts looking for solutions to common issues, I thought I would drop in a follow up post. I still play just about every day for an hour (I get in around 30-45 minutes during lunch at work, with the office door closed, and another 45-90 minutes at home most nights). Some days I get in a couple of hours. The only time I miss for a string of days is when I do a music festival, when I have no time to play and would rather listen to others (yeah, this will change someday, but I hang out with several pro's and I have nothing to offer).

I took the flat wounds off my mando about 4 months ago because I no longer liked the sound and am now using regular round wounds. No issues.

 The calluses have reached a point where they are fairly solid and shed a layer about every week. In the last few months I have noticed that I can play for much longer periods without any pain. In fact, that is the only issue. I really don't have 'pain', It's more of a soreness, and I know I cause it myself when I am really trying to push the speed and/or work excessively on something that is giving me trouble.  For instance, if I loop through Opus 57 at (my) full speed for 30 or 40 minutes, my fingers really are sore. If I am more relaxed and thinking, I will mix up the practice with scales and other tunes and I can go  for a long time. I have also gone through the growing/learning stages of pain in my right hand as I figure out how to hold the pick, strum (which I STILL can't do), and fix other problems. I am still quite slow in learning, but the callus problem is not holding me back, and I am having fun. Last night I was messing around with making different sounds and found that I could slide up and down the G and D strings without any issues. I never would have done that a year ago, for sure.

 Now my brain on the other hand is a problem I don't think I can fix, it still chooses to learn only what it wants to learn, WHEN it wants to learn it. Anybody got any ideas on that one?

 Happy Pickin'

Tom

pgarner - Posted - 04/19/2015:  09:50:30

Jafo & RJM,
Picking up this old thread... Thanks for the detailed advice. Very helpful!

Jafo - Posted - 04/19/2015:  10:02:59

AH what the heck, 3 years since I started this thread and I thought an update might be of miniscule interest. Callouses are still the same but probably a little smaller. I can play without pain indefinately and the new thing I've noticed is that I really have no soreness either. I can play for fairly long periods and the only problem I have is tiredness in the left hand and I begin to miss notes, I get sloppy.

 Nope, still can't feel anything with the finger tips, but I am getting used to it.

Tom