You have to give a thick pick a chance. I had somebody that is a much better player than I am tell me that I needed to move to a thicker pick. I tried one and hated it. I stuck with it for a short while and well now I hate thin picks. Trust me, give one a try around 80mm to 100mm (which are still too thin for me) and you will end up liking it. I started with those thicknesses and moved up from there. I now used them twice that thick. It is a process. Work your way up slowly.

I really like the Dunlop Ultex picks that Scott Memmer mentioned above. A while back, I found a variety pack of them on Amazon (6 gauges x 2 picks ea.), which gave me an opportunity to find what worked best for me. I usually play 1.14mm, but flex up (1.40mm) or down (1.00mm), depending on my needs.

Also, Dunlop sent me a dozen or so picks in the 1.14mm thickness, so I could see what worked best for me. I still liked the Ultex the best, along with some nylon grip picks, but the Tortex dulled the sound too much for my ears. I just ordered a few Primetones, based on Scott's post above.

Sounds like my plan too. I ordered some Primetones and am going to try one from Scott's company too. Hello rabbit hole, my old friend.

A while back there was another lengthy pic thread.....I love pic threads. A lot of people mentioned Dunlop Ultex and Primetone so I got 4 sizes of each from .73mm to 1.3mm. I prefer the .88mm and 1.0mm Ultex and Primetone close second, they're a bit brighter or harder sounding off the strings to me.

On Scotts recommendation I have ordered Nutone and JP Fast Turtles to experience Casin pics. As someone else in this thread said "The best and easiest way to change the tone of your guitar is with a different pics". If someone has a $3500 Guitar and spends $35 on a boutique pic that gives him the sound he loves that is a bargin. I can burn though more than that changing strings to find what works best.

When I play a rounded edge to my beloved BC TAD-1R-50 (or 60) I get dramatic tone. I can angle the rounded point and get almost fingertip tone. They are truly amazing. they make cheap guitars sound better. They make my guitar/piano Goodall Engl / Macassar Standard sound huge.

I can strum with them but I mostly I employ them for interesting stylistic genres. Sometimes I use them for leads. But mostly I use the BC's for melodic partial chords- double, triple stops, under some travis structure. The angle of the round fat end can approximate fingertip response. If I need to speed up I can lesson the angle a little or even flip it to one of the beveled (pointed) corners. This fingertip type (fingerstyle) tone can't be found anywhere else in pick land. I do love CL, and Wolfham and Primetones for a slight step down pick for Travis and simpler attack song requirements.

For rhythm strumming I like a lot of garden variety picks. The pick ga can be anywhere from light to heavy deflection depending on tempo. Usually a medium Green star pick for gigs gets the largest sweet spot for low volume acoustic rhythms.

https://reverb.com/item/14482628-blu...rc=aw.ds&pla=1

The rounded point, slight angle, gets the dramatic, pickless tone.

I have settled on the right thumbnail of a chimpanzee. Buying in bulk helps.

My BC TD 50 makes my acoustic guitars sound better than any other pick I have tried. Primetones, Ultex, Nylon, Gravity, Tortex, Casein, etc. etc. etc. I've run the racks.

I thought it was just hype until I bought one. It's the sound for me. I wish I liked the sound of, say my Primetones or my Ultex picks as much, but I don't. I don't like a bunch of 'click' when I pick, and I like warm yet present sounds. The BC does this better than anything I have tried. I wanted to like Casein better - they are so nice looking. Nope. Plain old UPS brown sounds the best to my ear. Primetones, by contrast, sound much duller. 'Thunk'. Ultex sounds brighter, thinner, and 'clickier'. Ugh. I wish I could find a cheaper pick that sounds like a BC.

I only have one of them, and I'll likely pick up a couple more. I play for my own enjoyment and part of that enjoyment is simply tone. BC for me.

I keep mine in a pick pouch on a keychain, and put it back every time. I hope I don't lose it, but if I do I'd be online in a minute ordering another - costing me what three packs of the strings I like cost me. Not a bad investment.

A lot of ink has been spilled on whether an expensive pick makes you a better player. I would say no.

However, a really good pick will markedly improve tone, and that goes a long way toward enjoying music, for me anyway. Tone is king in my book.

Others read different books, which does not make your book better, or worse, than theirs.

scott memmer

Pre-war chimpanzee thumbnails sound the best...


whm

See, this is where I get confused. I always heard prewar Antarctic Alpaca jaw bone was the best?

On a more serious note.....

OP here. Since I started this thread, a very kind gentleman sent to me a pack containing a couple of blue chip and charmed life picks he wasn't using to try out. I've learned a lot about picks since that time! There was a lot of variety in that pack, which gave me the opportunity to really experiment. I've learned that 1) picks can dramatically change the tone of a guitar, much more so that I ever though possible and 2) It's very difficult to land on 1 pick that does everything I want it to do. So much of it is song and guitar specific. For instance, my Taylor 322ce 12 fret is a really dark guitar. The bluechip TD40 helps that guitar out dramatically. Perfect, unless I want that dark, mellow sound I bought the guitar for. It also makes my J45 way too bright.

Consequently, I find myself preferring one over the others for a particular song with a particular guitar. This is great for recording. Really helps to tailor the sound to the song. For gigging, I'm kind of back where I started. Just give me a Fender heavy. By the time it goes through the PA, nobody can hear the difference anyway.

What he said...
 

I can't be satisfied with just one pick. So I carry a dozen or so. Most of them are V-Picks, which I discovered on a visit back to Nashville, where they're made. Picked up a few at George Greuhn's shop for $5 each, figuring if it's good enough to put his name on it, well! It's a clear acrylic triangle with softly beveled edges. Tonight it was drawing wonderfully woody, dark tones from my Seagull SWS Mini Jumbo that rivaled any description I've ever heard of the Gibson midrange "bark." But wait, there's more! Switch to the thinner, sharper edged Medium Lite model and the trebles come out to play, more like a Taylor. Then there's a really thick, round edged V-Pick that Carlos Santana endorses, saying it sounds "just like my thumb." That works well with jazz and ballads.

Along with some Primetones, a wooden pick and a coconut shell pick, I have plenty of tonal choices, all in a collection that cost about $50. That's a lot cheaper than a dozen guitars, all to be played with the same pick. See, expensive picks save you money!

As I’ve on this forum many times before, I have found it easiest to use one type of pick - in my case, medium-heavy celluloid, .084mm thick - and just adjust my grip and attack to get the sort of tone I want.

A few years ago I started slowly accumulating Blue Chip TD-35 picks; I think I have about a half dozen now. These have a similar flexibility as the medium-heavy celluloid picks, with the added advantage that they don’t get chewed up along the edges the way that celluloid picks will.

But most of the tone I pull out of my instruments is with my hands - the picks themselves really just amplify it.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

I have an EML casein, a Charmed Life red casein, a Blue Chip TD60 and a Blue Chip TD100.

My favorite is the TD60. I might sell the TD100 because it's a little thicker than I'm used to. Sounds great though. I really like the casein stuff too, but the Blue Chip material just sounds better to me and feels better.

I think it depends on what you're playing.

When I was auditioning picks a while back I used a metronome with increasing speeds and found, indeed, that I could play cleaner and faster with a more expensive pick.

I'm sure many, many players have no interest in playing any faster and would find that information irrelevant. That's fine, too.

For tone there was no comparison - for me. If you prefer a bit of click from your pick you might have a totally different opinion there as well.