Thanks, Rick. And thanks for referring grubby to Charlie Monroe. I thought of mentioning him but concluded I was putting too much in my post as it was. Charlie's work with the Monroe Brothers is really the place to start to learn rhythm guitar. He didn't have quite the bluegrass feel that was developed later on but you can hear every note and his use of bass runs covers a lot of territory. I still use that shuffel he played on "Bringing In The Georgia Mail" quite a lot.

Good catch on the "thumb and index finger" approach too. I neglected to mention that Lester Flatt also used a long metal finger pick---not the short Nationals used by banjo and Dobro players---on his index finger to play chords. I'm not aware that Lester played any notes with his index finger, at least I never saw him do it, but I could be wrong on that point.

Hope you lose your headache quickly,

      - Mark