As for me, when I first started fingerpicking style guitar 20 years ago, I could'nt play a lick without growing my nails out on my right hand. It was always a burden to keep them long enough for decent, clean guitar picking. However, do a little work around the house; the nails breaks. Bang the guitar too hard one night; there goes another nail. I tried fake nails, super glue, etc, etc. However, what happened was as I continued to improve my techquiue over the years, my nails length has continued to get shorter to where now they don't even have to come over the skin part at the end of my finger tips to work just fine. (Sidenote:Check out the closeups of Jake's nail on his DVD or on the thumb/pointer lesson he did will Aldrine. His nails are not long at all.) Anyway, in my situation it's more of a half skin half nail techquiue that I've found sustainable. Since now that I also enjoy playing the ukulele, I've found this techquie works equally well on this instrument...with one exception: the single-note fast thumb picking. The down stroke is no problem: nice tone, etc. But the up stroke with the thumb gets more of a hollow "ping" sound than that nice fat tone I want. As of yet, I have not trying growing my thumb nail out for the above reasons. So I'm trying to develop my speed with a two finger techquie using my thumb and pointer finger. i.e. hold thumb and finger together like your handing a business card. Then pick down with thumb and then pick up with the pointer. It's starting to work well but as with any new techquie, it takes a lot of practice to be dead on fast and clean with it. For what it's worth... that's where I'm at with the nail length and the single-note fast picking thing...