It’s almost an every other day thing for me now.
My personal hygiene has much improved since playing bass , trimming nails, washing hands
But yeah about 2 times a week I would say
I don’t really know! It’s as soon as they start catching on the strings. So, as and when needed, but it’s probably more than once a week!
Bizarrely because of the way I pluck and fret on a bass compared to a guitar. I’ve now had to turn everything on its head. I have to have no nail on the plucking hand and the fretting hand is not so critical. Whereas on the guitar I had to have nails on the plucking hand (I played finger picking blues, ragtime etc.) and couldn’t have any on the fretting hand.
I trim my 2 plugging nails as soon as it starts catching the strings. They are ugly short but that’s the price to pay for clean finger pad tone,
You can say that again.
In my guitar fingerstyle years, I grew my picking nails long, similar to the way classical players do. But when they needed trimming, I stopped using nail clippers because their blunt results reduced the versatility of attack I needed for dynamics of plucked strings.
The solution was to use a nail file instead of clippers.
As Al mentioned, as soon as my bass plucking nails get long enough that I can catch a bass string with them, I pull out my trusty glass nail file and take them down to where they need to be. Quick and easy. It takes but a few seconds and makes all the difference in the world for clean finger pad plucking.
I have this nasty old habit from fighting sports for biting and tearing my fingernails off with my teeth, full barbarian mode. One wrestling coach had insisted on it for the whole team.
I do it subconsciously now so never have long nails.
Toenails I use huge clippers for, before anyone asks (or worries )
blink, blink.
I’m sorry, @howard, but your wrestling coach insisted that the whole wrestling team kept their fingernails short by biting and tearing them off with their teeth?
As Pickles the Drummer once said, “that is the most metal thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”
On the original question, I obsessively keep my fingernails amazingly short. Not just for bass, but as a software developer I’m constantly typing. For me, hitting my fingernails on anything (like, other keys on the keyboard) is equivalent to anyone else scraping them down a chalkboard.
hahaahaa ha
we are running out of topix
Not really - we can always (re-)discuss wood or knobs
good point
C’mon, we have yet to get into fingernail tone-material. Like… do fake nails have a different effect on tone than do regular nails? And if so, does that really matter on electric instruments? So much more to discuss.
Once or twice a week, but more often on plucking hand. My bass reminds me to when I forget
I guess that highmass brass nails will improve sustain ^^
Yup. Preferably in front of the other team.
It’s the same coach that would shout things at us like “Get in there, rip off his arm, and beat him with the bloody end of it!”
Hmm, maybe we could market an emory board thumb rest. All the dust created from filing could function like a rosin bag to keep your fingers dry while playing.
I typically cut mine once or twice a week, then proceed to not touch my bass until I notice it’s time to trim again.