strings and damaging fingers

[Portis_26]

recently my finger tips are being torn to shreds like i can see 3 or 4 layers torn open. i got a new guitar and got erner ball super slinkies .09s when before i always used yamaha .1s could that be the problem. Or since i am still new (2 1/2 months playing) could this be what should happen? But my fingers did stop hurting earlier at about a month into it and now its starting up again with the new strings. Or could it be since i got my wisdom teeth taken out and i now have an excuse to sit there and due nothing so im playing like 8-12 hours a day?

[Cryptic Excretions]

Tell you what. Don't worry about it one bit. It's perfectly natural. I don't know how much the string brand would effect this, but my fingers are constantly being torn up then they turn into callouses. Every guitarist I've seen (that plays regularly and consistantly) has shredded skin and callouses.

[Lordathestrings]

True, that. I've been playing since 1968, and sometimes my fingertips look like I was rock-climbing.

[PonyOne]

i remember when i started playing, and i would shred the hell out of my fingers... bad times. it's not what you wanna hear but it just comes with time, sadly.

i know that there are some strings, i think they're Elixir? they're completely smooth. those might help a bit with the thicker strings but if they thinner ones are what's doing it probably not.

you could try to build your callouses up on a thicker string like a .12 and then go back to thinner ones. i used 12's for the first couple years, now i use 9's or 10's. they feel way nicer to play to me.

[CW14]

When I just started getting serious about guitar about 6-7 months ago, I never had calluses, and I couldn't get them with the 3-year-old .008 strings that were on there I kept thinking that my fingers would get sliced open...

UNTIL... I bought an acoustic with really stiff, hard strings and began practicing regularly on that. Then I began to get calluses.

My fingers still get torn up after long practice sessions though.

[Kevin Taylor]

It comes with the territory man...
If you don't play for a few weeks, your figertips get soft. Then you go at it for a few weeks again and your fingers shred and peel until until you're pulling off scabs and skin. It takes time to build up calouses and it's painful, but hey.... that's the way it goes.

It's a right of passage so just go with the flow until you build up the strength to the point where you develop a layer of hardened skin.