Originally Posted by: dean.hewittWill it always be like this or will I get feeling back and just a tougher outer layer of skin?
G'day Dean,
I can only answer from my own perspective and what I've observed of others.
No. Yes (with 'deficit'). Yes.
Going back 18 months, mine used to look like that for a while. They don't any more.
In time the skin on the tips will toughen and those calluses will disappear to be replaced by unbroken skin on resilient toughened fingertips. IME the fretting fingertips' sensation of touch will remain [u]desensitised[/u]. Goes with the territory as long as you play guitar I think -I haven't stopped playing contiguously sufficiently long enough to know what would occur if I were to stop completely or for a prolonged period e.g. a year.
Whilst it's untrue to say there will be permanent complete or partial loss of feeling as would occur with nerve damage referred to medically as a deficit, as I've experienced it, there is definitely a reduced fingertip sensitivity compared for example with those of your non-fretting hand.
Now I can't answer whether the tips might still shred to the point of breaking skin in the case of a professional musician who plays much more than I might in my amateur's man cave, but to give the above perspective, I routinely play anything between an hour minimum, and frequently up to 2x 1.5 hour to 3x 1 hour sessions over the course of any day most days a week, electric and acoustic. Lately it's been mostly electric. Generally, I no longer feel any soreness from that level of activity, and haven't for an aeon. [u]The exception[/u], experienced only recently, takes [u]a lot more[/u] intense, concentrated, play time.
I've the kind of temperament which will practice things persistently in pursuit of the objective -with breaks, over and over and over until I satisfied I've achieved competency with it rote. Not the '1000 times' in a session hyperbole, although even if I wasn't counting, a 'heck of lot' even within a single session before losing concentration as fatigue sets in. e.g. Putting this together and getting the timing and nuance of it right when I was learning it recently meant just that. After three or four days of multiple lengthy sessions performing those intro short and long slides, I felt increased tenderness in the slide and bend tips sufficient to give it a rest for a couple of days although I didn't want to. I could still comfortably play the rest of it and other songs, scales etc, and if feeling roughened and hard, the skin still never actually broke. A couple of days rest from the intro slides over and over complimented by application of some urea cracked heel cream to those tips, and I was good to go again.
Once one hits this stage, I think it would take an obsessive amount of professional practice or excessive performance play time to cause the fingertips to shred skin as illustrated in our images.
That's been my experience.
