[Brent Hutto]

I've mentioned in several threads my lovely fingerstyle guitar, a cedar-topped Jim Worland Prairie model. When I started trying to learn to use a pick (couple months ago) I knew that it was not really suited to flatpicking, it is pretty much purpose-built for a light fingerstyle touch which is why I bought it in the first place. It also has super-low action, the lowest I've ever seen on an acoustic guitar and a good bit lower than I used to have my Telecaster set up.

Not only do the frets touch the strings unless I hold back on my picking force, there are also rattle that seem to come from nowhere near the fretboard as well as harsh overtones and metallic attack noise when the pick strikes the strings at certain angles. I think that's because the guitar is built to really amplify overtones and it's acting as an amplifier that "overloads" when the transients from my pick attack get strong.

So I went out and got a guitar more or less just for flatpicking. Red spruce top, L-00 type body but still very lightly built and braced. When I brought it home, the action was sort of in-between. Pretty much ideal for fingerstyle but a lot higher than my Worland. I had frank buzzing on the D-string all the time and occasional buzzes on other strings when I really dig in. So I bumped the action up pretty darned high (about 0.107" low-E to 0.072" high-E at the 12th fret) which settled down the buzzes but I still have some harsh or rattly tones at certain times.

I'm convinced that the very occasional bad sounds I get now are entirely my technique. Not surprising as I'm still learning to control the pick. But with the extra headroom of this guitar (mostly the soundboard) and the higher action any rattles or "buzzes" can be eliminated by choosing a different pick. And none of it happens unless I'm consciously trying to "dig in" and emphasize certain notes or chords in a song.

So my advice is to crank the action as high as you dare, your OM-50 ought to have plenty of capacity for some strumming and moderate flatpicking. But you may find that with beginner's Hands Of Stone you just need a lot higher action than a good player would and it gets real picky about pick selection. I also found, counter to intuition, that the sound cleaned up a bit when I dialed out most of the neck relief with a truss rod adjustment. I'd swear that the bad-picking sounds with the relief at 0.009" became much less with it at 0.004" and that's with no change in action height at the 12th fret. Odd, that.