I bought a Guild D-4 a whole 11 days ago, and I have some monster calluses. For the first 3 days, I played until my fingers hurt really badly, then I stuck little pads of moleskin on the tips, and played some more. Seemed to work pretty well, or I may just be good at growing calluses. I do well with hair, so why not calluses?

My teacher has me playing in DADF#AD to get toughened up and prevent the frustration of not being able to sound somewhat good at the beginning. I also have a bum left index finger, so it makes using more than 3 fingers, or chords with a lot of stretch nearly impossible at this time. I can flat pick nearly every tune I know on fiddle, but I don't think that's the point of having a guitar. It's just nice to do in between practicing the halting ("where do my fingers go again? Oops - wrong string. Crap - not pressing hard enough, finger not close enough to the fret") chord changes.