Fingerpicking Steel String Guitar - flesh, nails or picks?

[roymond]

After 28 years, I have cut the nails on my right hand down to nothing. It's a pain to maintain nails, they break all winter when it's dry, and I'm doing more work in the woods in VT so I crack them all off anyway.

Some people seem to finger pick without nails. Is this a rumor? Do you just grow huge calluses on your fingers to do the deed?

If you're a steel string finger picker, how do you do it?

[Lunkhead]

No nails for me. Just callouses I guess.

[glennny]

me too, just callouses.
My banjo came with a full set of steel finger picks, and I have yet to practice enough with them for them to feel right. I imagine if you wanted you could grab a set of those at your local acoustic shop, and have that awesome attack.

[jast]

Me three. One day I might learn using picks properly, though. Who knows.

[Mostess]

I've bitten my nails constantly since childhood and I lose picks with supernatural certainty. So I fingerpick acoustic steel strings with flesh. I think of my fingertips like little violin bows; they make a shinier sound than nails or picks. I convince myself that I prefer that sound because it's hard to stop biting my nails.

Electric is a different story. Flesh-picking sounds crummy. I use a pick or do a back of the nails strum and a slap-bass thumbing (e.g. the rhythm playing on Just In Case's "Peace is Rest").

My dad used to have metal finger cuffs with little flat wings for finger-picking electric. They always felt funny when I tried them on. For years they sat unused in a plastic sandwich bag in the compartment of my guitar case until one day, supernaturally, I lost them.

[roymond]

Thanks all. I will just keep abusing my fingertips until they develop a proper shine. Because the flesh is so soft it's hard not to catch a nail now and then. I feel like a noob! Sort of refreshing, actually.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Just fingers on acoustic and cross picking on electric.

[Sober]

Usually just fingers, but for redneck stuff I'll use a home made thumbpick. I take a few inches of the bottom hem of a t-shirt, cut a small slit in it, and slip the pick inside. Tie it around my thumb, and I have a great little thumbpick with whatever kind of pick I want in it, and it has as much 'give' as I want it to have depending on how tight I tie it. fwiw I can't stand Dunlop thumbpicks.