Right - first, the new axe question. I don’t know what you currently have, but it sounds like it could use some work. I agree with WordMan and Carson O’Genic from upthread - six new tuners and a set up in Toronto would set you back about $75 - $150. I can’t tell if that axe is worth the investment, although I’m one of those who believes every instrument should be brought up to its maximum potential. $75 - $150 is not going to buy you a new instrument that is anything more than a piece of firewood that you can’t burn for the varnish.
That being said, you need to be inspired by your instrument. It needs to call to you at all times of the night and day. Your fingers need to twitch at the thought of your guitar; it’s that horse and rider relationship where you learn exactly how each other are going to respond. If getting a new Gretsch is what’s going to do it for you, tell your SO I said it was OK.
Now, this finger pain thing (from GQ) - first and foremost, I am not your teacher, and I highly recommend taking this up with your teacher. If you don’t have one, get one! In the meantime, I can give some advice, so can lots of people on this message board, but it’s nothing like being right there to poke, prod and straighten. Let’s test your grip - take your fretting hand and put it around your neck so that the thumb and fingers cover your jugular and your carotid. Pretend you’re fingering a chord, any chord. If you start to see spots, you’re using unnecessary tension. If you black out, you’re gripping way too hard. If your SO can pull your hand away from your neck without leaving a mark, that’s the idea.
The fingerboard of your guitar should be on several angles. The strings should not be running parallel to the floor - the headstock should be higher than the body so that the neck is on a 25 to 30 degree angle. Likewise, the fingerboard should not be perpendicular to the floor - the bass strings should be closer to the player than the treble strings. If you touch the high ‘e’ string to the wall, the fingerboard should form about a 25 to 30 degree angle.
If you’re right handed, your fretting hand should look like the letter ‘c’ when viewed looking from the headstock to the body of the guitar. (If you’re left-handed, it should look like a backwards letter ‘c’.)
The next question is the elbow of the fretting hand. It should be comfortably bent, and it is not allowed to rest on anything - not the chair, the couch, the arm of the chair, not your leg, nothing. It gets to flap in the breeze. Keep the wrist straight.
Now, put the fingers on the instrument and let the weight of the fretting arm pull the fingers to the fretboard. As an exercise, pull the thumb away from the back of the neck. If the fingers are in the right place (just nut-ward of the fret, no fingers or anything else touching the string between the fret and the saddle of the bridge), the note should sound just as pure, sustained and rich as with the thumb touching the back of the neck. To be absolutely clear, the thumb of the fretting hand is there for balance and location. It is not there for grip, pressure, squeezing - none of that is required because the finger transfers the weight of the arm onto the instrument, and that weight alone is enough to pinch the string between the fret and the fingerboard, giving the gorgeous sound we all know and love. If that weight is not sufficient, the services of a luthier or good guitar technician are required.
Chords are a little harder than single notes - the fretting fingers have to be perpendicular to the line of the frets and the line of the strings. This ideal x-y-z axis holds as true as possible for all the fingers - that way, the energy is efficiently transferred to the string (for minimum tension in the fretting hand) and the strings are allowed to vibrate freely without the interference of some flesh hanging over from a different string. This latter effect partly depends on the development of callouses, but angle is a huge factor as well.
So, to answer the question about finger pain, your description sounds to me like you are overgripping, and that’s the source of this long harangue. It’s very different from the violin, although there are some similarities. Guitars are cousins to viols, and they had frets on viols to make up for the relative inefficiency of the older bow. A modern violin bow transfers a tremendous energy to the string, and that makes up for the lack of frets. Guitars have frets in order to get sustain out of a single pluck - contrast pizzicato on the violin and how difficult the sustain is. Frets mean you don’t have to grip…
I am a guitar teacher, so I have a biased viewpoint, but I can’t stress enough how much I recommend a teacher. This excess verbiage above can be expressed in about 10 minutes in a lesson, and it’s more effective because you get the hands-on feel for it.
Hope this helps,
M. le Ministre
