See, for me, this is where I think I was getting it wrong for years. Once I stopped using my fingers to initiate the bends and started engaging forearm supination, bends became a lot easier.
right! the fingers are static and work with the wrist pivot. my bending/vibrato is a an act of the wrist and fingers simultaneously … cant stress enough to watch the jeff watson video. finger placement must be ahead of the wrist for proper pivot.
I just started taking Curcumin tablets as recommended by @fenrirokie and I;ve been taking Vitamin D3 and Magnesium for a while now. Not tried Krill oil, I guess it’s similar to the fish oil omega 3 supplements, maybe I should try it, certainly won’t do any harm.
I would love a scalloped neck yes, but that’s not in my budget at the moment.
Really with my finger problems I shouldn’t be playing at all or shouldn’t be playing the Strat at least.
No matter how much tell myself not to stress my fingers too much I always end up playing bends and 3NPS stuff, it just happens. The only real way to avoid it is not to pick the guitar up at all.
I’m just watching the Jeff Watson video, good stuff !
Krill oil is a super food. excellent for cognitive function, joints, inflammation in the body.
I agree with @Prlgmnr and @LuckyMojo - Guthrie Govan for string bending. Excellent teacher, easy to understand, wickedly great player and very cool British humor. He also shows techniques to avoid pain while bending strings.
@slyvai You mention having the same gauge on both strat and LP. Just a thought, that the longer scale length strat could use a lighter gauge. I have a strat and tele - I use 9’s for the Fenders and 10’s on my LP’s. I just got 9.5’s and am about to try them on my LP’s. The shorter scale LP goes better with a little heavier gauge than the Fender scale length. Just a thought …
I’ve noticed one of my main issues is that after a few cycles of vibrato on a bent note, I kind of “slip” and hit the string above the one I’m bending and get that kind of “double bend” sound. I’m trying to use my pointer finger to push the above string out of the way with mixed results so far.
Basically I’m having trouble digging in on my bends. I pick at my nails so they’re basically nonexistent – so maybe growing them out would help?
@Catmandu: Yes I did have lighter strIngs on the Strat than the LP before, I had standard 10s on the Strat and Skinny Top Heavy Bottoms on the LP but because of my finger problems I’ve changed them both to standard 9s.
Maybe I need to go to 8s on the Strat. In fact yesterday I broke the E string on the Strat and didn’t have another 9 so has to put a 10 on which is certainly not what I wanted.
I literally logged in to thank you for sharing this information
This might literally be the mechanical secret of bending and vibrato, hack of playing elite guitar.
Yes as u said too, ear is the most important, but u gotta be able to play what u hear too haha. thank u!!
*edit
honestly i cant find in the video u mentioned where the guitarist in the video talks about that honestly haha, could u tell me the timestamp ? but the info u mentioned really helped bcz its what i was doing when i was doing it good but couldnt be consistent with it ;D now i have my ear to guide me and this information to remember how to relax
7 minutes or thereabouts
Also try a scalloped fretboard if you like to bend, the grip is incredible.
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just watch the whole video, Jeff is a great player, you can’t go wrong learning some stuff from him…
one more thing… I’ve since resigned myself to NEVER getting rid of my YJM strat again. I made the necessary changes to my rig/upgrades to the guitar itself… I highly recommend one if you’re into that
style of music. The scalloped neck will teach you bending and vibrato like nothing else
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One very common problem that came up in my teaching days was that people don’t understand what vibrato actually is: a pulse. It makes very little difference whether the pitch bends up from the parent-note and back down, or down from the parent note and back up.
Singers and flautists overwhelmingly go down and back up, guitarists use both approaches, and beginner guitarists often make the mistake of trying to use the same approach for every situation.
So: a regular fretted note bends up, then releases. But a bent note does the opposite: it releases (descends) first, then bends back to the parent note. This happens instinctively for most players, but for others it doesn’t: they bend up to the pitch, then bend up farther for the vibrato, which is nearly always death.
In my world all roads lead to an Yngwie anecdote, here’s an odd one: In an interview (I think it was Guitar Player Magazine) he tells the interviewer that he takes a fretted note and makes it go flat with his fretting hand. He actually spells out that it doesn’t really make sense since he could just use the bar.
Wouldn’t you think the interviewer would ask about this highly unusual technique? Years later I realized this is the most common type of vibrato on classical guitar; you don’t bend the string, but lower the tension using friction, pushing the string toward the bridge.
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This is an interesting one on a scalloped guitar, because one can only put down so much pressure before the note wanting to go sharp fights the pushing towards the bridge (wanting to go flat).
Truthfully it doesn’t make a difference, any extra force is absorbed by the fingerboard. My Michael Thames classical has Dunlop 6000 frets (huge) and it doesn’t affect vibrato, there’s no difference with scalloped guitars either; you press exactly hard enough to mate the string to the fret and no more.
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There are two types of force here: one is towards the bridge (a few ounces, I presume), and one is towards the fretboard. The force towards the fretboard gives the “grip” that one needs to be able to apply the force towards the bridge. With regular guitars, my fingers definitely feel the wood and press hard enough for a good grip, but with my scalloped guitars, I’m not sure if I can do it, particularly on a non-wound string… and the result is… I fail. 
Well, I’ll just add it to the things that I have to learn!
Good stuff here: I never saw this thread back in '21.
Uncle Ben has a recent video on this bending/vibrato subject:
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