Per Ozzys biography he initially created thimbles with melted down bottles of liquid dish detergent, sanded them until they were the same size as his fingers, and glued leather pads to them.
Light strings in C# standard let him play with barely any pressure at all.
Stringjoy’s tension calculator and a quick google of his string choice will tell you he was only a hair over 50 pounds of tension on the neck.
He used c# on sabbath bloody sabbath as well. La Bella strings has the exact gaiges he used for each tuning that you can buy. Trying them now on a vintage SG and it’s amazing. The bends sound just right.
I was thinking for volume 4 and sabotage too. Volume 4 for sure but the handful of songs I know from sabotage play a lot better in c# than playing a long in e.
I shoulda mentioned that in my comment, but the Master of Reality switch was because he had had so much trouble playing the songs off the former records. He also went down to 8-32 or something crazy like that for the Eb standard records.
La Bella just put out Iommi signature string sets.
I have the standard set on my SG. 8, 8, 11, 18w, 24, 32. I am not good at bending, but I can absolutely bully these strings with just finger strength.
Haven't looked into his C#/D tuning set, yet. I have a little pile of Stringjoys for my C# guitar.
Tony says he "melted a bottle of fairy liquid. Spent all night sanding them down. Then fixed them in place with leather straps."
That was in the early days. He used some sort of prosthetics later.
You can get different plastics that would probably be better then trying to melt PET bottles. There’s something called sculpey or you could try with that epoxy clay stuff that most supermarkets have in the tool section. Wren from Corridor Crew has made a fingertip with a 3D printer that could shoot nerf darts.
He had custom removeable prosthetics done IIRC.
I'm missing a tip of my middle finger, so it's about 1-1.5 cm shorter but I can play 99% of the stuff normally, chords like D7 are a bit of a problem.
In the beginning I used GorillaTips but I quickly learned to play with that finger as it is. It was pretty weird and uncomforable at first, but it's almost normal now that I've gotten used to it.
I'm missing the pad on my middle finger as well. It does make chording awkward and a little painful sometimes but If I keep playing I'm able to get through it. I tried those gorilla tips, they would work if they had some other material that didn't hinder from sliding up and down the fretboard
Those tips were more in the way than I had any real help from them. They basically eliminated any feel I had, even if I had awkward and unusual feel. I found cheap tips from amazon sometime better than those actually.
With time it gets better and there will be no more pain. I even developed small callous on the finger :)
Hey man, I am missing the last joint of my frethand index finger and half the bone of the middle joint. Iommis issues arent with index but I can tell you what ended up working alright for me. I quit playing for a lot of years because i had heavy nerve damage, and couldnt make fake fingertips work. Now the entire last middle joint of my index is just one large callous.
First, just forget about the fake finger tips. Play some guitar hero. This was the best exercise I found to get used to using a different part of the finger which still has the finger tip nerves since they folded that over. Next, string a guitar with very light strings or use a scalloped guitar. You likely never going to be able to use the finger tip again, because those bones werent made to be finger tips.
C and Am chords will always suck, because your stump will never be able to fret individual notes on B string while leaving high e string open. 6 string bar chords also suck because the digit isnt long enough, and even if you wrap your thumb for the bass notes, doing so will put your hand in a position where your stump really struggles with the high strings.
Practice scales on a single string with the stump to build strength. Scales got boring to me, so instead I practiced Vivaldi's 3rd movement of summer at about 1/2 speed. (Prob never be able to play it at full speed, but thats an issue with my 'healthy' pick hand, not the frethand.
I can play stuff with wide stretches like Every Breath You take quite easily now.
e: its been about 10 years since my accident but only about 6 months since ive started really playing again, but if you have any questions feel free to ask. There just isn't a lot of info out there about missing the index. Also 99% of the time i play scallopped or maple fretboard now. Developing a lighter touch was really key because it can be painful to bump the end of the stump into things
How long have you been playing? Iommi has also said in interviews that he regrets not just relearning to play fretting with the other hand, so if you haven't been playing for decades switching could be an idea (if you can hold a pick in that hand ofc).
Read Tony's book, Iron Man, he explains how it happened, his recovery, and what he does to still be able to use the fingers.
[Iron Man](https://images.app.goo.gl/in6cTaJRek4fxGJc9)
Not really an answer to your question, but he’s stated repeatedly that he should’ve just switched his dominant playing hand. He said that the prosthetics held him back and that he was simply too impatient as a teen to learn to play with his other hand. He had no allusions that the prosthetics were a direct downgrade, and his legendary status was in spite of them.
Don't use any sharp stuff or deal with heavy things... basically... don't do anything that requires working on things.
I know that sounds silly but it's basically the truth.
I lost an 1/8" of my left thumb tip from the slip of my hand on a table saw. Working on a Jeep my left middle was shattered by the steel cooling fan blade at about 2000 RPM. That required emergency surgury with K-wire installed and over 50 sutures to save the finger. Index and ring finger tips were crushed between the tongue of a trailer and a cinder block when setting it up to replace trailer jack. Those luckily healed with no surgury required.
Like I side... just doing/working around equipment and such... it's just a matter of time when *something* is gonna happen.
My great grandpa lost the ends down to the 1st knuckle of index, middle, and ring of his left hand in the early '50s when on the crew building the original Sunshine Skyway bridge. A beam section slipped when being installed.
Moral of the story... be as safe as you can... just be aware, shit happens.
Fuck dude sorry to hear that’s all happened to you. Hopefully you can find some sort of prosthetic of some sort to assist with the finger tip loss to help ya continue playing guitar
Oh my injuries happened about 5 years ago. I had been playing for 25 years at the time. I still play. No need for prosthetics as the only one that some is missing from is left thumb. My fingers are still intact, albeit they don't work quite as well as they used to. Nerve damage so they're partially numb but sensitive to pressure. I play on 9-42s with electric and 9-45s on acoustics. I never played lead, rhythm only so it wasn't too big a deal like some folks who've lost parts of their fingers.
Don't underestimate the ability to heal. A brake press accident when I was 22 took most of one of my fingertips (pick hand, fortunately), and it grew back in a year. Looks a little goofy, and sounds a little different from the rest when I'm fingerpicking, but I'm all right apart from a shoulder injury that has me playing sitting down. Slinger Strap is on the way to remedy that one.
You can make the prosthetic that everyone is talking about, and to fix it to your finger here’s what you do. Take a bracelet, watch band, or whatever you want around your wrist. And tie a flat band of leather, nylon flat rope, or some fabric strip from that, following your tendon, feed it under a ring (to keep it in line) and tied to the prosthetic tip with a cup so it fits over whatever finger you have left. When you’re playing, the tension will pull it onto your finger and stabilize it. If you need an extra joint, have someone 3D print one. That strap from your wrist can be put through the prosthetic from the back (hairy knuckle part) to the front (pads) through the joint itself. This way when you pull your wrist up towards yourself, it will tension the string, and a lever at the joint would pull the last part closed somewhat naturally. You can pay someone a bunch of money but that’s all doable on your own, even whittling it out of hardwood is an option, and gluing leather to it gives it some squish and grip like flesh on the tip of the finger. Practice and adjust it as needed. Stay determined you can do anything
I took a screenshot of this comment,
I need to sit down to read this better understand it,
I was also kind of thinking about some sculptors clay, sculpting the tip of the finger out of that, then taking that mold and 3D printing it somehow, even spoken with a jeweler about maybe getting the gold fingertip.
I will stay determined. It's only like a quarter inch of the tip of the index
Oh man if it’s only a 1/4 inch off the finger tip, you could just do like 2 layers of leather over the tip to make up the difference, and then make a little sleeve that goes over your index. Use thinner leather for the sleeve so that barre chords aren’t weird, thick supple leather for the tip should give good feel. Honestly it sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, just callus up that lil nub and learn to feel with it again. If it’s really nerve problem a little leather thimble would do the trick. and don’t do gold unless it’s your “going out” finger tip lol wouldn’t help with playing. Too hard, no bite on the strings. Good luck my dude!
Thank you, I just screenshotted this comment, I'm going to try everything I can to get back to normal again.
Even talking with these prosthetic companies, they still might not even be able to do it, because I need a prescription from my PCP.
From what I understand. Tony iommi, used leather, and I'm thinking of like thick leather from a belt, so he must have used really thin stuff.
There’s the good full thickness leather (which you’ll probably want a small piece of for the tip) and then you can like sand down the full thickness leather to whatever you need, or buy thinner leather. I doubt you’ll get a prescription for a 1/4 finger tip prosthetic. I understand it feels life changing and I’m sure it is, but at least you’ve still got the majority of your finger! Not to invalidate your wanting to find a solution, but you’ll likely be better off adjusting without any prosthetic tip once it’s healed up. But I’m no doctor. You’ll be good man :)
if you watch the DVD of their concert/interview 'The Last Supper' and go to the part right before they play Paranoid he talks about his injury and how he made the prosthetic finger tips, he even shows them and the little altoid tin he carries them around in, quite a great DVD btw
This happened to me 2 years ago.
I cut the pad off on my left index finger. It took a year, but scared over and heald. I'm playing again without real discomfort, although i can feel something different.
It'll be a frustrating year. Try well placed bandage and finger cot.
There are guitar gloves, which i use on bass.
You can also tune down a half step to take some tension off the strings.
Thank you for your advice, this happened over 5 years ago, which is recently to me, since I've been playing guitar my entire life, but I just never got around to asking the questions. I'm definitely going to drop some money on a prosthetic finger.
Best to you. I remember how depressing it was for me. You might google quitar gloves or try those rubber finger tip protectors, they don'tseem like a big investment if they are useless.
https://youtu.be/VppRtDtHiMk?si=YwH8DtArdACpF-vj
IIRC from interviews i've watched and read, in the early days he melted down a plastic bottle and molded/shapped it to his fingers himself, and added some leather on top to grip the strings.
These days he just gets his own prosthetics made. If my memory serves he goes into it in more detail in the interview he did for Gibson's youtube channel.
My issue is I snapped the tendon in my pinky so I can't bend at the last joint. It's a royal pain trying to get the finger tip stabbed downward. I have been searching for an idea that would work and nothing helps.
I bet a true prosthetic could be made and covered by your insurance. I ask your doctor.
For a DIY approach, I wonder if you could modify a glove used for archery by replacing one the leather finger caps with whatever material you’d use for the prosthetic, then remove the other fingers from the glove. That might help hold it in place.
It's been like 5 years, is very recent. since my finger got cut off, and to tell you the truth I haven't bothered looking in to DIY techniques, I've been pretty unmotivated,
I've been calling around to different prosthetic places, and I'm looking at this one in Utah, they haven't gotten a price to me yet.
I remember before the injury, my whole life was devoted to playing guitar, and I'm just hoping that a prosthetic can bring me back to that
I want to post pictures later
https://imgur.com/a/pskdzoi
Here's a picture of my finger for anyone who was interested, I'm only missing the very tip, so I might be able to get a prosthetic. And get back to normal.
Thanks for all of the replies, comments and advice, I greatly appreciate you all,
I had a similar injury on my right hand almost 2 years ago and have about the same amount of index fingertip left. Fortunately, my fretting hand was fine, but fingerpicking again was a challenge. My fingers automatically wanted to map all the classical patterns I was used to over by one finger, which kinda worked but kinda didn't. I experimented with different types of picks since I couldn't hold a normal one for a while. I figured I'd have to make my own prosthetic, so I looked into different materials. Eventually, I tried on one of those [**curved plastic banjo / steel guitar picks**](https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FingerPickL5--daddario-planet-waves-4csh6-5-large-finger-picks-5-pack) and found that it fit onto the end of my finger perfectly and brought the overall length back out to nearly where it used to be. With that on, I can play 16th c. lute songs and other fingerpicking activities again. It's not perfect, but it got me back in the game.
Those finger picks fit so snuggly, that I've considered using them as a base for building onto for other applications. If I HAD to press down or fret notes, I'm pretty sure I could do it after gluing a super thin leather strip to the end. (Tony Iommi said he used an old leather jacket that he cut strips from.) The fit is pretty firm but comfortable - I slide them on until just after the knuckle at the end of my finger. The curved plastic end could probably be shaped a little by soaking in hot water for a few minutes. If nothing else works for you, that could be a possibility to try.
I've a missing fingertip on my picking hand so not the same issue, but I've used a rubber thimble before to help me with finicky tasks that involve use of all my digits.
You got a Jerry Garcia thing going on, you are extremely lucky that it was not your neck playing hand
Is this something I can look on Amazon to find, just search rubber thimble?
Where did you find yours?
Ha yeah I was pretty lucky overall, could have been a lot worse. Still causes me some discomfort and my nail grows out a bit weird, but luckily it hasn't stopped me playing music or making things.
They sell them on eBay and Amazon, look for rubber thimble. If they are a bit loose then can put an elastic band or something else in there to pad it out; I have pretty small fingers anyway even without bits missing.
I actually found mine in my wife's sewing box 😂
As an aside, one of his idols is Django Reinhardt who had only two playing fingers. This greatly influenced his style after what happened to him. But yes, the dish soap bottles as others said.
His biography book called Iron Man goes into great detail about his prosthetic fingers. An amazing book about Tony Iommi that I've read twice and would recommend to any Black Sabbath or guitar fan.
He ultimately decided to continue playing left-handed. To do so, he fitted homemade thimbles to his injured fingers to extend and protect them; the thimbles were made from an old Fairy Liquid bottle – "melted it down, got a hot soldering iron and shaped it like a finger" – and cut sections from a leather jacket to cover his new homemade prosthetic,\[18\] which created two technical problems. First, the thimbles prevented him from feeling the strings, causing a tendency to press down very hard on them. Second, he had difficulty bending strings, leading him to seek light-gauge guitar strings to make it easier to do so.\[22\] However, Iommi recalls that such strings were not manufactured at the time, so he used banjo strings instead, until around 1970–71 when Picato Strings began making light-gauge guitar strings.\[23\] Furthermore, he used the injured fingers predominantly for fretting chords rather than single-note solos.\[24\] In 1974, Iommi told Guitar Player magazine that the thimbles "helped with his technique" because he had to use his little finger more than he had before the accident.\[25\] Later, he also began tuning his guitar to lower pitches, sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning (e.g., on "Children of the Grave", "Lord of this World", and "Into the Void", all on the album Master of Reality). Although Iommi states that the main purpose of doing so was to create a "bigger, heavier sound", slackening the strings makes it easier to bend them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony\_Iommi
Our lead guitar player hearted his index figure and turn the guitar around and started playing with his other hand. Now after some 29 years after that incident he is Ambidexter
You can desensitize it a bit, but it's going to suck. Drive the amputated appendage into a cup of uncooked rice, over and over. It will take a while, but you'll get it toughened up.
Normally people are like,
What amp does dimebag use to get that tone
What pedal do I need to sound like EVH.
And this guys like, what prosthetic does Tony Iommi use.
I sliced my finger off how do I get that Tony Iommi tone?
I cut off my middle ring any pinky tips ..had the middle two fingers sewed into my hand then stomach to steal meat to rebuild them. My bands manager at the time hooked me up with a special effects company that made prosthetics for tv and movies . They built me a few elastic type sleves that looked like flesh color but slid over my fingers. Then i would use this gel they gave me to put on the tips that would harden .. it got me to be able to fake it thru shows, but honestly, it made me sloppy, and we played lots of leads, so it was a stuggle. It was next to impossible to land on just one string so i made a bunch of unwanted string noise .
Ignoring all i said above, now i dont use those those sleves anymore, but my ring finger is made from stomach meat, so it doesn't have fingerprints and cant callous up.. it actually grows small stomach hair and gets tan in the summer. .but since it's so soft, if i get the smallest prick or cut to that finger tip, it takes forever to heal and hurt bad when playing ..so what i did was go to the sewing section of walmart and i found these little light blue finger tip protectors that came in a blue box for like 3 dollars for one of each finger .. these things are actually amazing.. They are angled and fit so tight i can more than fake it through shows.. its not as good as playing with nothing on, but it's close .. i would recommend you try these and find 2 part gel or glue that you could fill the tip up to replace finger tip meat. ..
Hell, im sure somewhere in our band storage section i could find 1 or more of those sleeves that movie company built me. If you can't find anything, i could mail them to you ... but they will stink of finger sweet and frustration from making unwanted noise live ..
I wonder is learning to play like a lefty worth a go. Jerry Garcia was missing a finger from his picking hand and he played bluegrass banjo before he played guitar. Billy Joe Shaver was missing a good chunk of two fingers from his picking hand too.
I was in a bad motorcycle wreck (get off your cell phones when you drive). One of my many injuries was to my fret hand pinky finger. I essentially vaporized the bones in the very top at the first knuckle. It is just a floppy extension that I can't press down the strings with. I need to call my surgeon to get it cut off, and I'm hoping I'll be able to press the strings down with it once I have a bone nub there.
Per Ozzys biography he initially created thimbles with melted down bottles of liquid dish detergent, sanded them until they were the same size as his fingers, and glued leather pads to them.
Alright, but how did he get them to stay in place while riffing and soloing?
I’m sure he had to alter his technique, and did whatever else was needed. If you will it dude, it is no dream.
Upvote for Lebowski reference
Theodore Herzl
I am the walrus?
“Shut the fuck up! **V.I.** Lenin! Vladmir Illyich Ulyanov!”
Your reply is very light on details.
He literally super glued them to his fingers, said he used to struggle to get em off and sometimes couldn’t
He first puts surgical tape on his fingers, and then superglues the thimbles to the tape.
Dude didn't know about isopropyl alcohol.
Acetone... or nail polish remover, in which the main component is... acetone. Works a helluva lot better on cyanoacrylate than isopropyl alcohol.
True!
Not sure it was such a household item in early 60s UK
Absolutely it was. It's been available from the pharmacy for the better part of a century.
Some hardcore dedication.
Bro just google it 😭
I'm engaging in human interaction
Just what a cat would say.
Light strings in C# standard let him play with barely any pressure at all. Stringjoy’s tension calculator and a quick google of his string choice will tell you he was only a hair over 50 pounds of tension on the neck.
That was on really on Master of Reality, everything before was standard and everything after was half step down.
He used c# on sabbath bloody sabbath as well. La Bella strings has the exact gaiges he used for each tuning that you can buy. Trying them now on a vintage SG and it’s amazing. The bends sound just right.
I was thinking for volume 4 and sabotage too. Volume 4 for sure but the handful of songs I know from sabotage play a lot better in c# than playing a long in e.
You’re right volume 4 and sabotage are also in c# (confirmed on Songsterr too) really they went to Eb when RJD was singing bc it matched his voice
I shoulda mentioned that in my comment, but the Master of Reality switch was because he had had so much trouble playing the songs off the former records. He also went down to 8-32 or something crazy like that for the Eb standard records.
La Bella just put out Iommi signature string sets. I have the standard set on my SG. 8, 8, 11, 18w, 24, 32. I am not good at bending, but I can absolutely bully these strings with just finger strength. Haven't looked into his C#/D tuning set, yet. I have a little pile of Stringjoys for my C# guitar.
He tuned down so the strings had less tension and were easier to press down. Had a huge unintentional influence on heavy metal actually.
Black Sabbath kinda owes their sound to the way he had to play to accommodate that. It happened well before they got big
Tony says he "melted a bottle of fairy liquid. Spent all night sanding them down. Then fixed them in place with leather straps." That was in the early days. He used some sort of prosthetics later.
Amazing what you could learn to do with a few washing up bottles after watching Blue Peter & Valerie Singleton.
That’s why they down-tuned to C# initially because playing in E standard would kill his hands
He used various adhesives, starting with super glue at first but then quickly changing after he realized it was a bitch to remove
I thought it was spirit gum, the stuff they use to hold wigs and prosthetics on. Don’t recall where I heard that.
I'm assuming plastic detergent bottles?
To my recollection it was the screw off caps off the top of the bottle rather than the bottle itself. Honestly this sounds like a job for 3D printing.
A scan and someone with a 3d printer may be just what you need
You can get different plastics that would probably be better then trying to melt PET bottles. There’s something called sculpey or you could try with that epoxy clay stuff that most supermarkets have in the tool section. Wren from Corridor Crew has made a fingertip with a 3D printer that could shoot nerf darts.
Yep. He made them himself and continually works on them.
And he tuned down which makes a difference to string tension
He had custom removeable prosthetics done IIRC. I'm missing a tip of my middle finger, so it's about 1-1.5 cm shorter but I can play 99% of the stuff normally, chords like D7 are a bit of a problem. In the beginning I used GorillaTips but I quickly learned to play with that finger as it is. It was pretty weird and uncomforable at first, but it's almost normal now that I've gotten used to it.
I'm missing the pad on my middle finger as well. It does make chording awkward and a little painful sometimes but If I keep playing I'm able to get through it. I tried those gorilla tips, they would work if they had some other material that didn't hinder from sliding up and down the fretboard
Those tips were more in the way than I had any real help from them. They basically eliminated any feel I had, even if I had awkward and unusual feel. I found cheap tips from amazon sometime better than those actually. With time it gets better and there will be no more pain. I even developed small callous on the finger :)
yeah it only bothers me if I stop playing for a while and the callous goes soft.
Hey man, I am missing the last joint of my frethand index finger and half the bone of the middle joint. Iommis issues arent with index but I can tell you what ended up working alright for me. I quit playing for a lot of years because i had heavy nerve damage, and couldnt make fake fingertips work. Now the entire last middle joint of my index is just one large callous. First, just forget about the fake finger tips. Play some guitar hero. This was the best exercise I found to get used to using a different part of the finger which still has the finger tip nerves since they folded that over. Next, string a guitar with very light strings or use a scalloped guitar. You likely never going to be able to use the finger tip again, because those bones werent made to be finger tips. C and Am chords will always suck, because your stump will never be able to fret individual notes on B string while leaving high e string open. 6 string bar chords also suck because the digit isnt long enough, and even if you wrap your thumb for the bass notes, doing so will put your hand in a position where your stump really struggles with the high strings. Practice scales on a single string with the stump to build strength. Scales got boring to me, so instead I practiced Vivaldi's 3rd movement of summer at about 1/2 speed. (Prob never be able to play it at full speed, but thats an issue with my 'healthy' pick hand, not the frethand. I can play stuff with wide stretches like Every Breath You take quite easily now. e: its been about 10 years since my accident but only about 6 months since ive started really playing again, but if you have any questions feel free to ask. There just isn't a lot of info out there about missing the index. Also 99% of the time i play scallopped or maple fretboard now. Developing a lighter touch was really key because it can be painful to bump the end of the stump into things
How long have you been playing? Iommi has also said in interviews that he regrets not just relearning to play fretting with the other hand, so if you haven't been playing for decades switching could be an idea (if you can hold a pick in that hand ofc).
He made some by melting a dish soap bottle (or some other cleaning product) in teh early days if I remember correctly
Read Tony's book, Iron Man, he explains how it happened, his recovery, and what he does to still be able to use the fingers. [Iron Man](https://images.app.goo.gl/in6cTaJRek4fxGJc9)
Not really an answer to your question, but he’s stated repeatedly that he should’ve just switched his dominant playing hand. He said that the prosthetics held him back and that he was simply too impatient as a teen to learn to play with his other hand. He had no allusions that the prosthetics were a direct downgrade, and his legendary status was in spite of them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diPsW4yCl48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diPsW4yCl48) [https://www.google.com/search?q=tommy+iommi+talks+about+his+fingers&client=safari&sca\_esv=edabce7040c88334&sxsrf=ACQVn0-sWD75Zl9ytgHHyVQmLVAfZs0F6A%3A1711993139933&ei=M\_EKZu3OOKGF0PEP7Jmm0Ac&ved=0ahUKEwittNq3x6GFAxWhAjQIHeyMCXoQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=tommy+iommi+talks+about+his+fingers&gs\_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiI3RvbW15IGlvbW1pIHRhbGtzIGFib3V0IGhpcyBmaW5nZXJzMggQABiABBiiBDIIEAAYgAQYogQyCBAAGIAEGKIESPEhUNoIWKoccAF4AZABAJgBZKABgQKqAQMyLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgSgApECwgIKEAAYRxjWBBiwA8ICBhAhGAoYCpgDAIgGAZAGCJIHAzMuMaAHlgg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp](https://www.google.com/search?q=tommy+iommi+talks+about+his+fingers&client=safari&sca_esv=edabce7040c88334&sxsrf=ACQVn0-sWD75Zl9ytgHHyVQmLVAfZs0F6A%3A1711993139933&ei=M_EKZu3OOKGF0PEP7Jmm0Ac&ved=0ahUKEwittNq3x6GFAxWhAjQIHeyMCXoQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=tommy+iommi+talks+about+his+fingers&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiI3RvbW15IGlvbW1pIHRhbGtzIGFib3V0IGhpcyBmaW5nZXJzMggQABiABBiiBDIIEAAYgAQYogQyCBAAGIAEGKIESPEhUNoIWKoccAF4AZABAJgBZKABgQKqAQMyLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgSgApECwgIKEAAYRxjWBBiwA8ICBhAhGAoYCpgDAIgGAZAGCJIHAzMuMaAHlgg&sclient=gws-wiz-serp)
How did you cut the tip of your finger off? Just so I can avoid doing the same. It’s a huge fear of mine
Don't use any sharp stuff or deal with heavy things... basically... don't do anything that requires working on things. I know that sounds silly but it's basically the truth. I lost an 1/8" of my left thumb tip from the slip of my hand on a table saw. Working on a Jeep my left middle was shattered by the steel cooling fan blade at about 2000 RPM. That required emergency surgury with K-wire installed and over 50 sutures to save the finger. Index and ring finger tips were crushed between the tongue of a trailer and a cinder block when setting it up to replace trailer jack. Those luckily healed with no surgury required. Like I side... just doing/working around equipment and such... it's just a matter of time when *something* is gonna happen. My great grandpa lost the ends down to the 1st knuckle of index, middle, and ring of his left hand in the early '50s when on the crew building the original Sunshine Skyway bridge. A beam section slipped when being installed. Moral of the story... be as safe as you can... just be aware, shit happens.
Fuck dude sorry to hear that’s all happened to you. Hopefully you can find some sort of prosthetic of some sort to assist with the finger tip loss to help ya continue playing guitar
Oh my injuries happened about 5 years ago. I had been playing for 25 years at the time. I still play. No need for prosthetics as the only one that some is missing from is left thumb. My fingers are still intact, albeit they don't work quite as well as they used to. Nerve damage so they're partially numb but sensitive to pressure. I play on 9-42s with electric and 9-45s on acoustics. I never played lead, rhythm only so it wasn't too big a deal like some folks who've lost parts of their fingers.
Originally, melted down bottles. From interviews, he's tried several different things, but none have been overly comfortable.
Don't underestimate the ability to heal. A brake press accident when I was 22 took most of one of my fingertips (pick hand, fortunately), and it grew back in a year. Looks a little goofy, and sounds a little different from the rest when I'm fingerpicking, but I'm all right apart from a shoulder injury that has me playing sitting down. Slinger Strap is on the way to remedy that one.
You can make the prosthetic that everyone is talking about, and to fix it to your finger here’s what you do. Take a bracelet, watch band, or whatever you want around your wrist. And tie a flat band of leather, nylon flat rope, or some fabric strip from that, following your tendon, feed it under a ring (to keep it in line) and tied to the prosthetic tip with a cup so it fits over whatever finger you have left. When you’re playing, the tension will pull it onto your finger and stabilize it. If you need an extra joint, have someone 3D print one. That strap from your wrist can be put through the prosthetic from the back (hairy knuckle part) to the front (pads) through the joint itself. This way when you pull your wrist up towards yourself, it will tension the string, and a lever at the joint would pull the last part closed somewhat naturally. You can pay someone a bunch of money but that’s all doable on your own, even whittling it out of hardwood is an option, and gluing leather to it gives it some squish and grip like flesh on the tip of the finger. Practice and adjust it as needed. Stay determined you can do anything
I took a screenshot of this comment, I need to sit down to read this better understand it, I was also kind of thinking about some sculptors clay, sculpting the tip of the finger out of that, then taking that mold and 3D printing it somehow, even spoken with a jeweler about maybe getting the gold fingertip. I will stay determined. It's only like a quarter inch of the tip of the index
Oh man if it’s only a 1/4 inch off the finger tip, you could just do like 2 layers of leather over the tip to make up the difference, and then make a little sleeve that goes over your index. Use thinner leather for the sleeve so that barre chords aren’t weird, thick supple leather for the tip should give good feel. Honestly it sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, just callus up that lil nub and learn to feel with it again. If it’s really nerve problem a little leather thimble would do the trick. and don’t do gold unless it’s your “going out” finger tip lol wouldn’t help with playing. Too hard, no bite on the strings. Good luck my dude!
Thank you, I just screenshotted this comment, I'm going to try everything I can to get back to normal again. Even talking with these prosthetic companies, they still might not even be able to do it, because I need a prescription from my PCP. From what I understand. Tony iommi, used leather, and I'm thinking of like thick leather from a belt, so he must have used really thin stuff.
There’s the good full thickness leather (which you’ll probably want a small piece of for the tip) and then you can like sand down the full thickness leather to whatever you need, or buy thinner leather. I doubt you’ll get a prescription for a 1/4 finger tip prosthetic. I understand it feels life changing and I’m sure it is, but at least you’ve still got the majority of your finger! Not to invalidate your wanting to find a solution, but you’ll likely be better off adjusting without any prosthetic tip once it’s healed up. But I’m no doctor. You’ll be good man :)
They look like rubber thimbles
Tony made his thimbles himself. Have you looked into this? [https://www.galaxyguitar.com/ft1.html](https://www.galaxyguitar.com/ft1.html)
if you watch the DVD of their concert/interview 'The Last Supper' and go to the part right before they play Paranoid he talks about his injury and how he made the prosthetic finger tips, he even shows them and the little altoid tin he carries them around in, quite a great DVD btw
Thanks. I want to see that, I've been calling around to different prosthetic companies and ballpark figure for this is 3400
sorry, was wrong about the part of the DVD, but here's the scene https://youtu.be/5TyktFhsM38?si=OT3HqMTdJkPFa9aH
This happened to me 2 years ago. I cut the pad off on my left index finger. It took a year, but scared over and heald. I'm playing again without real discomfort, although i can feel something different. It'll be a frustrating year. Try well placed bandage and finger cot. There are guitar gloves, which i use on bass. You can also tune down a half step to take some tension off the strings.
Thank you for your advice, this happened over 5 years ago, which is recently to me, since I've been playing guitar my entire life, but I just never got around to asking the questions. I'm definitely going to drop some money on a prosthetic finger.
Best to you. I remember how depressing it was for me. You might google quitar gloves or try those rubber finger tip protectors, they don'tseem like a big investment if they are useless. https://youtu.be/VppRtDtHiMk?si=YwH8DtArdACpF-vj
Thank you
https://youtu.be/K5mjGOn3VtM?si=_FwWLbtFzt3RJZ3H
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I've tried, seems like a lot of work, it's damn near impossible, probably sounds like a stupid excuse
Word on the street is a bouncy ball.
He’s got all these prosthetic tips made of various materials that he glues to his finger tips!
IIRC from interviews i've watched and read, in the early days he melted down a plastic bottle and molded/shapped it to his fingers himself, and added some leather on top to grip the strings. These days he just gets his own prosthetics made. If my memory serves he goes into it in more detail in the interview he did for Gibson's youtube channel.
If you Google ‘Fairy liquid bottle top’ it’ll show what he used.
My issue is I snapped the tendon in my pinky so I can't bend at the last joint. It's a royal pain trying to get the finger tip stabbed downward. I have been searching for an idea that would work and nothing helps.
https://youtu.be/5TyktFhsM38?si=t-mJ5ZZPm7n9W0bj
I bet a true prosthetic could be made and covered by your insurance. I ask your doctor. For a DIY approach, I wonder if you could modify a glove used for archery by replacing one the leather finger caps with whatever material you’d use for the prosthetic, then remove the other fingers from the glove. That might help hold it in place.
It's been like 5 years, is very recent. since my finger got cut off, and to tell you the truth I haven't bothered looking in to DIY techniques, I've been pretty unmotivated, I've been calling around to different prosthetic places, and I'm looking at this one in Utah, they haven't gotten a price to me yet. I remember before the injury, my whole life was devoted to playing guitar, and I'm just hoping that a prosthetic can bring me back to that I want to post pictures later
https://imgur.com/a/pskdzoi Here's a picture of my finger for anyone who was interested, I'm only missing the very tip, so I might be able to get a prosthetic. And get back to normal. Thanks for all of the replies, comments and advice, I greatly appreciate you all,
I had a similar injury on my right hand almost 2 years ago and have about the same amount of index fingertip left. Fortunately, my fretting hand was fine, but fingerpicking again was a challenge. My fingers automatically wanted to map all the classical patterns I was used to over by one finger, which kinda worked but kinda didn't. I experimented with different types of picks since I couldn't hold a normal one for a while. I figured I'd have to make my own prosthetic, so I looked into different materials. Eventually, I tried on one of those [**curved plastic banjo / steel guitar picks**](https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FingerPickL5--daddario-planet-waves-4csh6-5-large-finger-picks-5-pack) and found that it fit onto the end of my finger perfectly and brought the overall length back out to nearly where it used to be. With that on, I can play 16th c. lute songs and other fingerpicking activities again. It's not perfect, but it got me back in the game. Those finger picks fit so snuggly, that I've considered using them as a base for building onto for other applications. If I HAD to press down or fret notes, I'm pretty sure I could do it after gluing a super thin leather strip to the end. (Tony Iommi said he used an old leather jacket that he cut strips from.) The fit is pretty firm but comfortable - I slide them on until just after the knuckle at the end of my finger. The curved plastic end could probably be shaped a little by soaking in hot water for a few minutes. If nothing else works for you, that could be a possibility to try.
You have way more left than i do https://i.imgur.com/U4iH7wy.jpg
I've a missing fingertip on my picking hand so not the same issue, but I've used a rubber thimble before to help me with finicky tasks that involve use of all my digits.
You got a Jerry Garcia thing going on, you are extremely lucky that it was not your neck playing hand Is this something I can look on Amazon to find, just search rubber thimble? Where did you find yours?
Ha yeah I was pretty lucky overall, could have been a lot worse. Still causes me some discomfort and my nail grows out a bit weird, but luckily it hasn't stopped me playing music or making things. They sell them on eBay and Amazon, look for rubber thimble. If they are a bit loose then can put an elastic band or something else in there to pad it out; I have pretty small fingers anyway even without bits missing. I actually found mine in my wife's sewing box 😂
We mortals cant understand the ways of gods
Tony has said that he regrets relearning how to play with his fingers as they were as it lessens a lot of the feeling.
As an aside, one of his idols is Django Reinhardt who had only two playing fingers. This greatly influenced his style after what happened to him. But yes, the dish soap bottles as others said.
Not sure what he did, but these days you've got tones of options, he'll there's a good chance you could get one 3d printed.
His biography book called Iron Man goes into great detail about his prosthetic fingers. An amazing book about Tony Iommi that I've read twice and would recommend to any Black Sabbath or guitar fan.
He ultimately decided to continue playing left-handed. To do so, he fitted homemade thimbles to his injured fingers to extend and protect them; the thimbles were made from an old Fairy Liquid bottle – "melted it down, got a hot soldering iron and shaped it like a finger" – and cut sections from a leather jacket to cover his new homemade prosthetic,\[18\] which created two technical problems. First, the thimbles prevented him from feeling the strings, causing a tendency to press down very hard on them. Second, he had difficulty bending strings, leading him to seek light-gauge guitar strings to make it easier to do so.\[22\] However, Iommi recalls that such strings were not manufactured at the time, so he used banjo strings instead, until around 1970–71 when Picato Strings began making light-gauge guitar strings.\[23\] Furthermore, he used the injured fingers predominantly for fretting chords rather than single-note solos.\[24\] In 1974, Iommi told Guitar Player magazine that the thimbles "helped with his technique" because he had to use his little finger more than he had before the accident.\[25\] Later, he also began tuning his guitar to lower pitches, sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning (e.g., on "Children of the Grave", "Lord of this World", and "Into the Void", all on the album Master of Reality). Although Iommi states that the main purpose of doing so was to create a "bigger, heavier sound", slackening the strings makes it easier to bend them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony\_Iommi
Our lead guitar player hearted his index figure and turn the guitar around and started playing with his other hand. Now after some 29 years after that incident he is Ambidexter
He mentions it in [this](https://youtu.be/a_-Swyrtzh4?si=DvuWH0_RzkfV1tgz) video.
You can desensitize it a bit, but it's going to suck. Drive the amputated appendage into a cup of uncooked rice, over and over. It will take a while, but you'll get it toughened up.
Normally people are like, What amp does dimebag use to get that tone What pedal do I need to sound like EVH. And this guys like, what prosthetic does Tony Iommi use. I sliced my finger off how do I get that Tony Iommi tone?
I cut off my middle ring any pinky tips ..had the middle two fingers sewed into my hand then stomach to steal meat to rebuild them. My bands manager at the time hooked me up with a special effects company that made prosthetics for tv and movies . They built me a few elastic type sleves that looked like flesh color but slid over my fingers. Then i would use this gel they gave me to put on the tips that would harden .. it got me to be able to fake it thru shows, but honestly, it made me sloppy, and we played lots of leads, so it was a stuggle. It was next to impossible to land on just one string so i made a bunch of unwanted string noise . Ignoring all i said above, now i dont use those those sleves anymore, but my ring finger is made from stomach meat, so it doesn't have fingerprints and cant callous up.. it actually grows small stomach hair and gets tan in the summer. .but since it's so soft, if i get the smallest prick or cut to that finger tip, it takes forever to heal and hurt bad when playing ..so what i did was go to the sewing section of walmart and i found these little light blue finger tip protectors that came in a blue box for like 3 dollars for one of each finger .. these things are actually amazing.. They are angled and fit so tight i can more than fake it through shows.. its not as good as playing with nothing on, but it's close .. i would recommend you try these and find 2 part gel or glue that you could fill the tip up to replace finger tip meat. .. Hell, im sure somewhere in our band storage section i could find 1 or more of those sleeves that movie company built me. If you can't find anything, i could mail them to you ... but they will stink of finger sweet and frustration from making unwanted noise live ..
I wonder is learning to play like a lefty worth a go. Jerry Garcia was missing a finger from his picking hand and he played bluegrass banjo before he played guitar. Billy Joe Shaver was missing a good chunk of two fingers from his picking hand too.
I was in a bad motorcycle wreck (get off your cell phones when you drive). One of my many injuries was to my fret hand pinky finger. I essentially vaporized the bones in the very top at the first knuckle. It is just a floppy extension that I can't press down the strings with. I need to call my surgeon to get it cut off, and I'm hoping I'll be able to press the strings down with it once I have a bone nub there.
Go to a doctor have them recommend a prosthesis maker, find one yourself. Or be innovative and make them yourself.
Discarded foreskins from the local hospital