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How I “cut” my middle finger
On Monday I hurt my fretting middle finger while just fooling around on my guitar. I don’t even know exactly how, I wasn’t fretting properly on the tips of my fingers, was more down on the pad and then doing a hammer on and mixing in some slides. Whatever happened is unclear but suddenly it felt like the B string was cutting into my finger. It wasn’t actually, there was no open skin, not even redness! Just the sensation of being cut! Has anybody else ever had this happen?
It must have caused some nerve damage on the pads of my finger. It was hurting so much I couldn’t play yesterday at all, even typing on my laptop caused significant pain. It’s a bit better now, I was able to start doing challenges again, but I’m still feeling it and it bothers me as I type this and have to hit the “d”, and the “e” quite frequently with my middle finger.
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4 Replies
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Sorry to hear this. I hope it starts to get better soon.
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Yeah that has happened to me, I would call it injury not so much nerve damage. Should heal up. Try this – have a luthier/guitar tech do a set up on your guitar to set the action low and put 10’s on. This will make fretting easier on the finger tips because less pressure will be required. A more extreme idea would be to get yourself an electric guitar, put 9’s on it with low action – this will be the easiest yet. Use the electric off and on to give the finger tips some rest from (I imagine) your glorious Martin guitar with 12’s.
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I do have an electric guitar also. I fool around with all of my guitars. The finger is definitely heeling. Now it’s already a lot better than 8 hours ago. Thanks for the advice!
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@petelanger i’m sorry that happened. I think I’ve had it happen to me and it’s more of a bruising than maybe even nerve damage. If you you were hammering on or sliding on areas of your fingers that weren’t callused or used to that type of action, pressure, motion, or maybe you did it so much that you bruised it. I’ve done that, and they’re very tender and sore. It just takes time, like you said, for it to get better.
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