8 to 4 string adjustment

[man dough nollij]

I decided to turn a rather poorly setup acoustic mando to a four-string to remedy a totally screwed up string spacing at the nut. Now the (four) strings are spaced right, and it plays about 1000 times easier. The first thing I noticed, though, was YOW! Four strings are tiny and sharp!

I'm going into a whole new world of calluses, I think.

I suppose you have gone through that, going from an 8-string to a single-course strung electric? Ouch!

[Magnus Geijer]

I had that same realization, but then, all of a sudden, I have no problems with it at all. I think part of the process is just getting your fingers to accept that they only need to use half as much down pressure as before. I currently have no calluses at all, but the four-string isn't hurting me a bit. YMMV, of course.

/Magnus

[Christian McKee]

I lose a lot of callus thickness when I spend more time on electric. The single strings certainly are "sharper," but I play lighter guages on the electrics, and they have a slightly longer scale length, so the overall stress on my fingertips is less.

Christian

[mandroid]

My Now 4 string started life as an A50 8 string, I bought it already redone as a CGDA tuned Dola
with a custom installed 4 pole stacked humbucker in the top.

still has 8 tuners on it.. nice Jazzy tone..

[man dough nollij]

I've never played an electric mando, but I do remember hearing that they are set up with a very low action, compared to a normal acoustic. The mando I'm playing has an overly high action at the nut, so a lot of pressure is required for first position notes.

It's interesting, I've put maybe a half an hour of playing in since I took four strings off, and it's made some gnarly callusses already-- just from distributing the pressure over half the area.

[kww]

I got a similar problem when I started on my tenor guitar after playing the tricordia for a couple years. Hand position is a big part of it for me. #On the tricordia, I tend to rotate my fingers a bit so that I have more width across the course, because that makes it easier to get all three strings fretted cleanly. On the tenor, if I do that, I tend to mute an adjacent string, so I have to work on making my finger fret parallel to the fingerboard. I wind up with one line cutting at a right angle across the three calluses already on my finger, and I have no sensation at all anymore.

No blood yet, though.