Being able to create beautiful, diverse tones on the classical guitar is a great ability to have. From warm soft tones, to bright crisp tones and everything in between. This mostly pertains to the classical guitar, to a lesser extent, the steel string guitar. If your nail is too thick (an example would be acrylic nails), you can get that kind of heavy, clicking, thud type sound, without much diversity of tone. If your nail is too thin you get a weak, thin sound; difficult to produce a nice warm, round tone. What you want is a nail that is capable of producing a wide variety of tone color. Instant Nails were designed with diversity of tone in mind. Here’s some information on getting optimum tone out of your Instant Nails. Although these tips may seem a bit lengthy, the actual procedures take only a minute or two. There are varying factors that can affect the tone of Instant Nails. They can be adjusted. Some of the factors involved are: How much natural nail is there underneath the Instant Nail. How far the nail has has grown out. How much glue was used. The width of the nail. Did any glue get under the nail, etc.
       If you want a brighter sounding nail, you can file down the thickness on top of the nail. Only file the area of the Instant nail that has natural nail underneath. Start filing where the natural nail stops and taper backwards. (Don’t reduce the thickness of the tip of the Instant Nail that doesn’t have natural nail underneath it). Filing down the thickness will add flexibility to the nail, and brightness to the tone. You can also file and taper underneath the nail. Good results can be obtained by using a rotary nail file with an “under the nail” filing bit. A fine, Swiss carbide, tapered cone works great for this. Keep in mind while performing this procedure, that just a little filing can have a noticeable effect. As you file, the nail will acquire more flexibility. You can test your nail while performing this procedure on a guitar string as you proceed. Also, be aware that filing too thin can make the nail weak. If  that does occur however, it's an easy situation to correct.  A little experimentation with these methods will help you fine tune and achieve the desired tone from your nail.

       Instant Nails make a great patch. Works great for natural nails or Instant Nails. Cut a piece wide enough to cover the crack or weak area, plus a bit more to allow for tapering and adhesion to the sides. You can cut it longer and use the excess length as a handle. Then just glue the Instant Nail patch to your nail bed. Don't worry about how neat it looks at this point, just get it to stay on, as you're going to be filing, tapering and smoothing the patch into your natural nail. Make sure the shape matches the contour of the area you're repairing. Once the patch is glued to your nail, add more glue all around the edges. Let dry, or spray some mild nail glue dryer. Then file and taper the patch into your nail bed. Electric rotary nail files are really a necessity for this because of their accuracy, especially at tapering around the edges. Use a fine grit file and/or 1500 grit sandpaper to finish. Makes a really strong repair. You can also use this technique if you lose the "corner" of a thumbnail, or if you need a partial nail.

                                                                 Click here to see how to apply a patch
 

Super Glue Tips: When replacing the cap on the super glue, don't put it on too tight, just loosely put it on and store upright in a cool dark place. Also, to test if your super glue is old, simply dispense a drop from some height, and watch it to see if it's at all "stringy". If so, it's old. Get some new glue. ( This test is for thin glues). If you're going to be using any nail glue dryer (accelerator), make sure that the original bottle of super glue is capped, and put away, far from where you're using the nail glue dryer.

        Super glue is not bad for your nails if used correctly. It's what "Fingernail Glue" is. It's been used for this purpose for many years. It's not perfect, but currently it's the best glue for fingernails. Super glue is non toxic. As a matter of fact, they used to use it for medical stitches in the exact same form that you can buy right off the shelf. It actually has antibiotic properties. Nowadays they use a slightly different form of cyanoacrylate for medical stitches, but it's basically the same. It's probably not a good idea to breathe the fumes before it's cured if you use it a lot, but in the small amount used for fingernails, for most people it shouldn't pose any problems. Super glue does have its idiosyncrasies. But if you're aware of what they are, they're really very easy to overcome and remedy. One of these is, over time, applied super glue can get brittle. If you use it on your nails, and you run your fingernail into a wall, or bend it suddenly, you can get a "stress fracture" running through your nail. If this occurs, it's very easy to remedy, and should be fixed as soon as possible. A quick remedy, which takes about 10 seconds, is the put a bit more super glue over the area and spray with some nail glue dryer. That usually lasts quite a while. A more permanent remedy is to file down the area a bit with a rotary nail file, apply a patch and then taper it seamlessly into your nail. That takes about 1 minute and makes a very strong repair. When using super glue, you need to be aware of the condition of your nails on a daily basis. That's part of the maintenance. Any cracks, lifting, or weak areas should be fixed. The good news is that it usually takes only about a minute or two to fix anything that should come up. Super glue is not perfect. But if you learn to use it wisely, it works really well for all sorts of fingernail applications.

Nail Files:  If you're using an emery board type file that has a sharp edge along the side, you can take another rough grit file and file down the sharp edge of the file you'll be using on your nails. Sometimes when filing a fingernail, the underside of the file can inadvertently cut into the pad of your finger underneath the nail. This can be pretty painful and keep you from playing for a day or two. Just a little tip on how to avoid this.