Huge vote of thanks to guitarfishbay for posting the Davamastercontrol Pick, I now have one and it is wonderful. I always struggled doing the Sixpence thing and now I can get the sound but with something that I can actually grip!
Can't thank you enough Sir.
Great Trades With Fretwired,Shugz,Simply Ben ,Digitalkettle, Loosemoose, Timmyo , Si ,thecolourbox and frankyknuckles
From the mid '80s I used Jim Dunlop nylons exclusively for many years, ranging between the .6 and 1mm. To get back up to speed after a long gap in playing I began doing finger exercises, and as the dexterity returned I found that the picks couldn't keep up and felt unresponsive. My credit card had just been renewed and the old one was lying on the table waiting to be shredded, so I decided to see how it would shape up. Cut roughly to JD dimensions and with the edges bevelled, it was great.
I've since made many of them and find the best length to be around 35mm. By varying the grip, the one size fits all styles: for very fast picking I curl the index finger so that the last joint is almost horizontal and the top of the pick resting on the first joint. For strummy styles, held more loosely with last joint nearly vertical and about 10mm of the pick exposed. For a funky single note, partial chord style, I grip with the index finger nail almost level with the pick end so that there's a slight secondary strike from the nail and muting from the thumb. The last is good for arpeggios too.
The downside is that they wear down more quickly than a nylon pick. I also like the playing edge slightly abraded, which further shortens the lifespan. Seems I'll have to apply for more cards.
I use the same pick for all styles and, at the moment, it's a Dunlop 1.14mm Nylon Max Grip. I pretty much use nylon picks exclusively.
The conductor said I could get my bookbag and run around the hallway with it.
You really have experimented, your post made me smile a lot. I'm glad you have gotten results. No offence intented, but I love the eccentricity of that. Ironically, that's probably the most wonderful thing a Credit Card ever did(Play music instead of creating misery)Originally Posted by guitarstuff
Heh, I remember reading somewhere that John McLaughlin used the lids off pies, or something like that, as picks.
Glad you like it! Definitely much easier to use than a sixpence.Huge vote of thanks to guitarfishbay for posting the Davamastercontrol Pick, I now have one and it is wonderful. I always struggled doing the Sixpence thing and now I can get the sound but with something that I can actually grip!
Can't thank you enough Sir.
There have been more exotic materials. As a teenager there was a long stretch of using rough bits of plastic torn from an Airfix Lockheed Hercules. Caused hideous disfigurement to the spruce top of my immaculate Hofner Verithin, which I then attempted to smooth out with an axe, with predictable results. Later on, during the punk period, a blunted razor blade (had probably read about someone's "slashing" guitar style).You really have experimented, your post made me smile a lot. I'm glad you have gotten results. No offence intented, but I love the eccentricity of that. Ironically, that's probably the most wonderful thing a Credit Card ever did(Play music instead of creating misery)
As I'm trying to sell a guitar here, it might've been be better to keep quiet about this.
Andy James talked about this a bit when he played at the Birmingham guitar show last year. All quite interesting and noticeably different when he demonstrated different ideas with different picks.
Yes.
I use Jazz XLs for most things, but find thinner picks useful for some fast funk stuff.
This is because I can maintain a better grip on them, whilst still having a light touch on the strings.
I've mostly been using those same Ultexes for the last couple of years, recently leaning slightly more towards the thinner 1.40mm version. I do find that they wear very quickly, though[1], losing that nice pointy tip, so I'm forever reshaping them until they get too small.... Before the Ultex Sharps I was a staunch Jazz III user of many years, but I now find larger picks easier to keep a relaxed grip on. Weeny picks now cause uncomfortable choking. I like the attack of the Ultex better, too, in terms of both sound and feel.
I find changing between wildly different sorts of pick is really useful when practising picking licks – it helps me break out of ruts by forcing the adoption of better technique when I'm pushing my "maximum playing height" upwards. But I'll then go back to my default choice for performance.
[1] This is probably because the thrash metal I practise for my band serves as a high-speed angle grinder. I probably pick more notes in one gig than a blueser does in four or five! Plus, my choice of techniques includes pick-slides and Rhoads/Satriani-style pick-edge tapping, so it's no wonder they wear out so fast....
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