Guitar Picks
- Thread starter Lauren Morales
- Start date
Medium-thickness picks seem to offer the most general diversity and flexibility. Thin picks are trash, and should only be used really for getting percussive sounds on recordings from acoustic guitars (think “baseball card in the spokes” kind of sound). Heavy picks are awesome, but without a LOT of practice, they can be difficult to use for casual strumming – same for smaller-sized “Jazz” picks.
There are a lot of “boutique” style picks out there, but for most players it is beneficial to learn to work with ordinary, mass-produced picks. That $20 custom pick may feel awesome and be comfy and smooth, but if you wind up becoming a touring guitarist, tossing 15 of them into a crowd every night can be expensive.
There are a lot of different materials out there, from lexan variants (Dunlop stubbies, for example) to basic plastic (the classic “Fender Medium”) to tortex (meant to simulate tortoise shell, which are crazy awesome but super expensive) to newer materials like Ultex.
I have recently changed over to Ultex because I find it tonally pleasing on the strings, offers reasonable grip, and like Keith Richards, unnaturally long life. There are two variants I play with. One is the standard thick Jazz III pick, which is a nasty, pee-colored thing, but is really my favorite pick right now, and that John Petrucci signature pick (yes, those are actually a thing, and I struggle with that reality). I’m certainly not one for signature ANYTHING, but the JP picks are black Ultex, slightly larger than a typical Jazz III, but not “standard” sized, either, and last forever with good, clean tone. They’re possibly the best all around pick, though I tend to prefer the standard Ultex Jazz IIIs.
Dunlop offers various pick samplers and so do other vendors. Spend a few dollars on one or more, and try the different variants out for a few days each to see which ones resonate with you.
There are a lot of “boutique” style picks out there, but for most players it is beneficial to learn to work with ordinary, mass-produced picks. That $20 custom pick may feel awesome and be comfy and smooth, but if you wind up becoming a touring guitarist, tossing 15 of them into a crowd every night can be expensive.
There are a lot of different materials out there, from lexan variants (Dunlop stubbies, for example) to basic plastic (the classic “Fender Medium”) to tortex (meant to simulate tortoise shell, which are crazy awesome but super expensive) to newer materials like Ultex.
I have recently changed over to Ultex because I find it tonally pleasing on the strings, offers reasonable grip, and like Keith Richards, unnaturally long life. There are two variants I play with. One is the standard thick Jazz III pick, which is a nasty, pee-colored thing, but is really my favorite pick right now, and that John Petrucci signature pick (yes, those are actually a thing, and I struggle with that reality). I’m certainly not one for signature ANYTHING, but the JP picks are black Ultex, slightly larger than a typical Jazz III, but not “standard” sized, either, and last forever with good, clean tone. They’re possibly the best all around pick, though I tend to prefer the standard Ultex Jazz IIIs.
Dunlop offers various pick samplers and so do other vendors. Spend a few dollars on one or more, and try the different variants out for a few days each to see which ones resonate with you.
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