** reposted since my title was misspelled **

Finally, after 66 years of wanting to play a musical instrument, I purchased a steel-string acoustic guitar. I choose an acoustic guitar for portability without the need for power. My interest is simply to learn a dozen or more sounds to play for my family - no big "rock star" dreams!

[br]About the guitar I purchased (and can be returned). It's a 41" inexpensive beginner model guitar by bcp. I found no specs on the neck but I measure about 45mm.

[br]So I subscribed here to begin learning and practice. I got stuck at Guitar Fundamental II when for the first time attempting to finger any string without touching adjacent ones. With my 2nd or 3rd left hand finger pointed straight into the fret and angled to be the narrowest, I still have at best a paper-width space to each adjacent string.

[br]So after googling "fat fingers", I seem to be left with several options.

[br]1) Learn to play using alternate fingers and/or better control. I suspect that there are many others with large fingers are great guitarist.

[br]2) Switch to a nylon string guitar since it has a wider fretboard. I may still need to deal with my index finger but should give me more clearance. I read that a wider spacing makes it harder to reach chords but my hands are larger as well.

[br]3) Buy a 12 string steel guitar and remove each duplicate string. Since the fretboard wider, with the extra strings removed, I would have more space between the remaining 6 strings. Is this crazy?

[br]4) Time to consider another stringed instrument.

[br]Thanks in advance.

[br]Jim