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I have been in a job for the last few months that has required me to have short nails and it has resulted in me neglecting the guitar but I am eager to start playing daily again. Artificial nails seem to be the logical alternative but I have no experience using them and can’t imagine they are as effective. Has anybody here tried them? How are they? Are they easy to put on and take off etc?
Short nails can still work for playing. Not sure what job requires “shorter than average” nails, but I suspect that what you had been using were probably too long anyway. The only physical activity that harms my nails is dance rehearsals. it is inevitable that I end up making at least one fake one by show time. I use two ply paper towel and CA glue (Cyanoacrylate) and file flat for tone. These fake nails last about a week and fall off naturally. For the show this weekend I ended up making 2 last Thursday. One of them already fell off yesterday, the other one I suspect will fall off on Thursday or so.
I do remember someone here at the foro years ago, I think he was a doctor or surgeon or something medical and having nails was not an option.
I would also suggest that someone could not have nails if he wanted to bite them, I had an electric guitarist friend that ate his nails the whole time like that. But then again this is not a job (the nail eating and not the electric guitarist part of course)
20 years ago I used acrylic nails made in a nail salon, because I played a lot with a 12 string acoustic Guild I had, and my nails would get destroyed. On my classical they were very hard to control and get a decent sound out of. They would also get caught on the strings very easily because the nail was very thick and hard. After that I used silk and glue to reinforce my nails until Jeronimo Maya advised me to let my nails natural so they could get harder by themselves, and eventually they did. Of course his nails where unbreakable.
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