Anyone know of a good product to help form callouses on finger tips?

I think the best is Gibson, Martin, Epiphone, Taylor, et.  I think you get the idea.  As a "newbie" of less than a year, I believe the best is to keep practicing to form them naturally.

Keep It Fun,

Dean

you ask a question like that on a guitar web site and you know your going to get the  answer. they bottle this stuff up and let it go for alsmost nothing its called practice.
good one Dean i think FEnder makes some of that too.welcome to the site they make this stuff called finger ease that makes your strings slick that i rather like.it is by tone

Yep, about 5 years of practice will develop a permenant callous. I recently spoke with an upright bass player (symphony and union musician) lady and i thought i had a good callous goin' but wow...hers were like perfect and not peeling or bleeding or cracked like mine. This lady said i'm pressing harder than i need to and that all i need is to press 'just enough'. Visions of OTM's lessons came to me also, but i've heard this elsewhere, like in my music stores being mentioned by long time accomplished musicians. I press 'not so hard' anymore but i'm still working on getting it 'just enough'.

GuitarZen

yeah pressing toohard can slow you down as well...and makes slides and other fun things...painfull lol..press til the note sounds and no more..alo pressing to hard makes the notes go sharp.....

There is no shortcut for calouses

What has helped my fingers is flat wound strings.  They changed the sound of my git, but I love the new mellow sound.  The flat wounds are a lot easier on my finger tips but I'm still continuing the "grow" the calouses only without the MAJOR pain involved.

Keep it FUN,

Dean

Welcome to the site Sonray!  I went to a lighter gauge strings on my acoustic 0.012-0.053 (Elixirs) to help at first. I also tried to learn songs and things on the e, b, g, and d strings till my fingertips got nicely padded. This approach is coincidentally the first 20 pages of Hal Leonards Method book 1.  After a couple weeks of practicing of about an hour a day I didn't get too much pain and I started to work on all the strings.  I have seen a product called Tuff Skin for blisters and such but I would be afraid it would leave a lot of residue on my strings. Hope this helps.  BTW I believe this is one of the best resources on the web for any guitar related info you might ever need. Old lefty beginners(like me) are not discriminated against here chords and scales are transposed for us. 
Regards,
Buzz

GuitarZen wrote:

"...all i need is to press 'just enough'. Visions of OTM's lessons came to me also, but i've heard this elsewhere, like in my music stores being mentioned by long time accomplished musicians. I press 'not so hard' anymore but i'm still working on getting it 'just enough'.

GuitarZen

...I'm trying to remember the name of the jazz guitar player who jokingly said: "...if you have to have calouses, you must be playing rock-n-roll."

...that's because all that you really need is "just enough" finger pressure to fret the string cleanly.

...now, string-bending is TOTALLY something else since you need to simultaneously PULL the string UP in pitch as well as fret it.

Let me relate a little story. When I first started playing guitar (bass actually) many years ago I went through the same troubled process of building up callouses as nearly everyone here. I practiced and practiced, often many hours a day. I focused on songs with lots of slides on the large .105 gauge string at times. I played until my fingers blistered several layers deep, and it felt like they had already burst open. They hadn't so I kept playing, under considerable pain. I was rewarded with nice, thick callouses within a matter of weeks.

At one point I went to guitar and the callouses still applied, albeit the strings felt different. Then after a while I stopped playing for ten or fifteen years. Definitely long enough for the callouses to go away.

A few years ago I picked the guitar back up. I was faced with the same daunting task of growing callouses. Armed with the Internet this time, and therefore a considerable amount of data I hadn't had years before, I decided to start off slow. I played for about fifteen minutes a day. If my fingers started to hurt, I put the guitar down until the next day. I figured I'd take it slow and avoid all the pain this time.

I was rewarded with nice, thick callouses within a matter of weeks. No tricks, no pain. It turns out callouses will form where they need to; not where you force them to. Coating your fingers won't help them grow any faster, and I suspect will slow the process down. My advise, based on experience and a degree of experimentation, is to just take it slow and let the callouses form naturally.

Hey G,

For whats its worth..... When I bend strings, I push up on the any of high 3 strings, and pull down on the lower 3.. For example: If you try to push up the D string at the 8th fret to raise it 3 + steps, you will push it right off the side of the neck, but if you pull down you get that little extra room to work with..

J

my bending is kinda of odd..lol I do it alot tho..but I dont have any special technique or direction for my bending I jsut do it lol....

My first geetar was an Ibanez and it had the TOUGHEST STRINGS YET. I still have em and I got calluses from em after playing with it a whole year. Ibanez comes with sturdy strings. Well....atleast mine did. They'll help you form calluses quick....if you can stand the pain.

Hey Its Ed, welcome back !

Cheers,

GuitarZen

wow i think i'm the only one that doesn't want my fingers to be all calloused
at the tips. i play as much as possible on my first guitar a steel string
acoustic electric then at night when i don't want to be to loud i switch
to my classical which is even easier on the fingers. and its been a good
two years of continuous practice and my fingers don't get sore from the strings
anymore but i think its cause i try to get the action set on my guitars as
often as once a year to keep from having to fight the guitar just
to fret a chord

these callouses are a good thing civic they allow for sliding and vibraot and bending without any real pain...its just better if the string doesnt hurt

My fingers feel fine man acoustic classical electric or bass and no callouses. The only thing that happens with my fingers is they get tired so I work out different practice routines and streches to loosen and strengthen up my fingers

sonray wrote:

Anyone know of a good product to help form callouses on finger tips?

I DO I DO .PUT CRAZY GLUE ON THEM AND LET IT DRY ,HEHEHEHEHHE.

Play a guitar with really high action, this will make your fingers scream, keep going until they really hurt, three or four days later, do it again, do three reps like that and you will have a good start on numb tips.

Bulldog and Morty have it right...make your fingertips scream, hurt bad, crack and bleed...then glue 'em up with crazy glue and keep on rockin'.

Seriously?,

GuitarZen