length of fingernails

[Klaus Wutscher]

Dear fellow mandoholics,

Allright, I have observed this strange phenomenon for a number of years and have yet not been able to explain it:

I noticed that the length of my fingernails (left and right(!)) have a noticable inpact on my tone; when I cut the nails on my left (fretting) hand, the TONE improves noticeably. Not that they have been long before cutting , I cut them from "short" to "as short as possible". This is weird because
a) I could see a point when it comes to accuracy which is easier to obtain with short nails. But tone?
b) Should it not be irrelevant how a string is fretted since the tone is created by the vibrating string (bridge to fret) and not behind it?

Also, I hold the pick with three fingers and the tip of my middle finger slightly touches the strings when playing a downstroke. Again, the sound improves when the nail is very short. I don´t fully understand that either because it only affects downstrokes and even then, the finger touches the string before the pick and therefore should not be relevant for the tone.

Am I missing something? I´ve been observing this for a number of years and to me, the difference in tone is dramatic! Did anybody else observe this too or am I just plain weird?

[Bertram Henze]

I found that I use my fingers differently with different nail lengths. This is not a conscious thing - angle and pressure change involuntarily, probably in order to keep the nails out of the way, or out of harm's way - whatever. Different angle/pressure makes different tone, I think. This effect is the stronger, the smaller the instrument, i.e. the more important exact finger placement is.

Bertram

[Klaus Wutscher]

Yes, this could well happen on a subconcious level, I have noticed that too. But I still wonder why the tone changes. On a violin, it would be obvious. But on fretted instruments, what is the difference? A fret is a fret is a fret. The longer I play, the more elusive "tone" becomes to me. Seems that there are much more factors involved in getting good tone than we are aware.