Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrkgnao | Hacker News Reader

> And people quit electric guitars more often than acoustic ones, he said, because of the pain factor: Steel strings hurt delicate hands.

Huh? I can only imagine that they meant s/acoustic/classical/, because both acoustics and electrics have steel strings (and, of course, steel strings on an acoustic have significantly higher tension than those on an electric). Classicals have nylon strings.

View on HN

For me there's the pain factor and also the fact that when trying to set up barre chords or any chords for that matter my chubby fingers always seem to hit adjacent strings. I easily grokked the saxophone, clarinet, flute, and trumpet but it's much harder for me to physically make music on a guitar.

Yeah, I find it much less painful to play on electric than on acoustic. I don't play on electric that much because of the time it takes to get the cable, plugin in the amp, turn it on, etc...

Most people that play on electric would use a pick, while on acoustic guitar there is more finger-picking involved, no?

True, but finger picking doesn't really hurt your fingers (or at least it never has for me, a guitar player of 14 years now). It's definitely pressing on the strings with your left hand that's the pain point for pretty much every budding guitarist I've ever talked to.

Funny, for me it's always the right hand that hurts when playing steel-stringed guitar.

I think it is because I don't have particularly strong nails, so they always broke very close to the flesh, so I'd have to do fingerpicking with my actual fingertips.

Most of the pain on the left hand, in contrast, was related to lack of muscle strength. After a few days of practicing it would be gone.

>I don't have particularly strong nails

How much sunlight exposure do you get? My fingernails were also very weak until I started supplementing vitamin D, which made them grow noticeably thicker and stronger. I think a lot of people here spend most of their time indoors so they're at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency.

For me, nails are an on-and-off thing. My right hand has never hurt either way (and I haven't been playing for a long time).

If you really want to finger pick with your nails, you can try some clear nail polish to add a little strength. If that isn't enough, you can go for the old classical guitarist trick of layering superglue and silk to add some nail strength.

I was surprised by this part, too, and I figured the same thing. I've been playing guitar for most of my life, and the lower tension on electric strings is why I recommend to pretty much anyone to start with an electric, even though the electric guitar seems like the more "advanced" instrument.

Not only strings tension but distance as well. As a 5 strings bassist with big hands I find painful any attempt to play a full chord on a guitar. 2-3 notes easy rock rhythm chords are ok but anything more complex forces me to push and bend fingers to an unsustainable level if I want to avoid mutes.

Maybe they were inferring the bending that one usually does more often on an electric guitar vs. an acoustic or classical - without calluses, a persons fingers can get chewed up pretty quickly on an electric.

It's not really the bending that chews up your fingers, it's the steel strings in general. I haven't played an electric in years, but play jazz and classical on a steel string acoustic several days a week. It doesn't hurt like when you first start, but I definitely still notice the bite!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com