[JREC]

Hey guys. I've been playing around with my steel string acoustic lately, and doing bends on the fatter strings is killing my callouses, tearing ruts in them just about. Are nylon strings less rough on your hands for bending? Or maybe I should just try different strings or flat my tuning or something ;p

[allthumbs]

What guage strings are you using? How much of a pitch change are you bending too. How are you holding the bends, How long have you been playing. These are all factors that need to be looked at.

[737blues]

Try getting two fingers behind your bends. Better control, less strain. Particularly effective if bending upwards but even if you bend by pulling down on the string, a second finger can still add strength to the finger in contact with the string.

[JREC]

Sorry for the length of time between replies, just got back in town for the summer and have been a tad busy A little more info on my situation:

I've been playing about a year and a half now.
I use 12s on my acoustic.
I use 2 or 3 fingers to do bends
I usually bend with an upward motion, hooking my thumb a bit to get a leverage point, although I'll bend down sometimes, using more of the palm of my hand as the fulcrum.
I can do half step bends just fine, and full step bends on the lighter strings are generally ok. However, once I'm bending, say, d or lower strings, it almost isn't worth it because my callouses get ripped to shreds and I have to take it easy for a while to let them grow back smoothly. I'd try lighter strings but on those thick ones I don't think a gauge change would make that huge of a difference...maybe I should just steer clear of bending the big ones for a year or two heh thanks for the replies guys.

[allthumbs]

Big bends on an acoustic are pretty difficult on the heavier strings. You would have to slack tune if you really wanted to do big bends. once your passed the G string it gets pretty challenging.