How long until you get callouses on your fingers?

[st00f]

I must be doing something wrong lol, other than slightly harder skin on my fretting hand I've never had any blisters or calluses or really any pain despite playing at least 2 hours a day, I'm convinced some people just will never get proper hard calluses.

Does it cause pain to play those 2 hours a day? If not, those are your callouses.

 

[beelzelboss]

I get some hard callouses if I play a in a relatively short amount of time, but lately it's been that my fingers are just getting "thicker"

The only places I get truly hard peices of skin is exactly where I hit the string. I've been playing long enough that my technique for fingerstyle is hitting the same spot every time, so I will get a blister there, then leave it for a while, then play again and get a blister. Repeat for a week or two and then I had a blister. This is especially true for pop and slapping.

As of late though, now that I no longer live in dry Las Vegas, and I'm in a more humid environment, my fingers are just a little bit thicker. They still peal a lot, and it looks like I've torn up my fingers, but they don't hurt. Back in Vegas I would get callouces that were my entire fingertips, here I don't get that.

An interesting trick I found about a few years ago to give yourself an artificial callouces is superglue. It literally gives you a plastic coating over your fingers. I prefer to do a couple coats on my fingering hand, a one or two coats on my fretting hand. The last time I did this (2 weeks ago) I just put some one my fretting hand, a single coat or two, and then left it. Now my fingers are generally thicker. After a couple of days the superglue almost became one with my fingertips.

I don't suggest doing the superglue trick unless you need it. The only time I ever resort to that is when I'm jamming and get a fat blister, or I have a reason to play for a lot longer than my fingers can handle, like learning 10 chili peppers songs in a week. ><

If you can already play 2-3 hours and your just starting..... kudos man. It took me months to build up to that.
Also, callouses don't really matter. The reality is that you are going to play through an amp at the show, and you are going to want to play softer, and let the amp do the work. Same goes for popping and slapping. I know its hard to soften up, but turn your music down, and play don't play your bass as hard.

 

[AnotherChance]

I've been playing/practicing bass for 3 weeks now and spots on fingers 1, 2 and 4 are peeling.

I'm pretty sure my technique with finger 4 is defective, because only the very outside edge is peeling.

 

[hbarcat]

I first started playing bass at age 18 and soon began playing between 10 to 15 hours per week. I frankly don't remember how long it took me to develop calluses.

I stayed in the habit of near constant playing for about 25 years and have managed to develop a thick skin on my fingertips.

However, in 2013, I became seriously ill and couldn't play the bass at all for about three or four months, during which time my fingers lost most of their toughness and became very sensitive.

As I began to redevelop my ability to play, I had to be careful not to get blisters on my fingers by starting out with short, easy sessions and gradually building up to longer, more vigorous playing sessions.

I remember it took about six weeks or so to regain most of the tough calluses on my fingers, and probably two to three months to get back to where I was before I became ill.

 

[P. Aaron]

The physical conditioning is part of practice that gets refined in rehearsal and on stage. I had more noticeable callouses early on, nowadays, not really.

Credit Jeff Berlin for this:

Practice for a short time, then come back an hour or 2 later and see what you have retained. This method works great for learning new songs and the stuff you already know.

Some times, not playing along to a song but having it instead earworm your brain is one of the best ways to retain them.

 

[Prodigus Filius]

Hey, what about calluses on thumbs. My thumb is my pick

 

[waver]

I have been playing until my fingers cry out in pain and past every night, and it hurts until it almost goes away the next day, at which point I get home and practice again, I have done this for almost a week, still no callouses. How long does it normally take to build them up on standard bass strings? Sorry if I'm being impatient, it sucks to only be able to play 3 or so hours a day.

Just for another perspective, I don’t think I ever had any kind of finger pain as you and others have described, even when practicing a lot right after just starting out (I started on bass just a few years ago after playing other instruments). And thick callouses have never developed, just slightly thicker fingertips. Maybe always playing flats is the difference.