A Guitar Pick Primer -- Please Participate.

[Goat Mick]

Originally Posted by LadysSolo

N+1, I totally agree with you about thin picks, I don't care for anything thicker than 0.8mm, I have tried and I just don't like the feel or the sound or the way I play with them. I guess that's why they make different thicknesses!

The important thing is you tried different things before deciding on what works for you. I know some great players that think an 0.88 is like playing with a dinner plate and I know just as many that think playing with something less that 1.5 is like using a piece of paper. Everyone is different but the important thing is to try everything before choosing what works best. I’ve tried just about every pick out there over the last 40+ years and to me a 1.25 with a bevel is my happy place. Experiment and find your happy place. It may be a thin out of the $0.50 tray or it might be a $40 boutique option but after you try everything you’ll know the pick in your hand is the best for your playing.

[musicman1951]

Originally Posted by N+1

led pick.


This is what happens to me repeatedly, every time I try these experiments. I want to join the party, really I do - but trying these thick picks, bevelled or not, merely reinforces the realisation of how very much I prefer the sound and feel of the Tortex 0.5mm picks. If they stopped making them, so I was forced to use a thicker pick, I believe I would stop playing the guitar altogether.

For many, many years I used thin plastic teardrop picks (mandolin?) on my electric guitar. They were so thin I would rip them with some regularity. I didn't really care as they were about 1000 picks for a dollar. OK, maybe not quite that cheap - but we're talking late 60's.

I use 1.0mm now. I know what you mean about liking what you like: I tried 1.25 and sent it back. So whatever works is good.

[Wolfram]

Originally Posted by Big*Al

One thing that many overlook is how clean their picks are. Once a pick gets coated with skin oils or other gunk, it gets more slippery. I will almost always wash my hands right before playing and I will occasionally take my picks over to the kitchen sink and wash them with dish detergent. It's surprising how much this helps with pick control. (Hand washing helps with string life too.)

Just... don't ever do this with a casein pick! It will absorb the water and likely warp and distort.

Cheers,
David

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by LadysSolo

N+1, I totally agree with you about thin picks, I don't care for anything thicker than 0.8mm, I have tried and I just don't like the feel or the sound or the way I play with them. I guess that's why they make different thicknesses!

I guess it depends on your picking style. If you tend to do a straight up down type strum, then a lighter pick may well be better, but I play a more bluegrass /country style picking single notes, runs, hammer-ons and pull -offs and I find I need the accuracy that a 1 m/m or thicker pick gives me.

This is my style, so, perhaps that's why I've gone to thicker picks over the years.

[Pine]

Originally Posted by Charmed Life Picks

The brown stuff Blue Chip uses -- DuPont Vespel -- is one of the most expensive plastics on the planet, at $1100 for a square 10" x 10" x .25" -- and no, those aren't Spinal Tap numbers, Russ, those are real numbers -- inches, not feet. In fact, Blue Chip is shaving margins pretty close on their products, and if anything I'd expect prices to rise -- not much, maybe $5.00 per pick, but rise slightly. To the best of my knowledge, they've never had a price increase, and have been in the market almost ten years. Think about it: everything has gone up in price during the last decade -- electricity, natural gas, oil, lubricants, buffing wheels, buffing compounds, the list is endless. <SNIP>

Hi Scott. I was wondering if you have inside information on Blue Chip’s actual cost structure and profit margins, as well as whether they are planning a price increase? You speak pretty authoritatively above.

[Charmed Life Picks]

Originally Posted by Pine

Hi Scott. I was wondering if you have inside information on Blue Chip’s actual cost structure and profit margins, as well as whether they are planning a price increase? You speak pretty authoritatively above.

Pine, excellent question. BC is a privately-held company, so of course I have no inside knowledge of their costs or margins. However, as an English professor by training, I love doing research. I do TONS of research on everything I come in contact with, and, believe it or not, I love it. Yes, I have no life. I've always been insatiably curious about everything. It drives my wife batty, but it's the way I'm wired. So I've studied this issue very closely.

Before I answer, one quick story. I was talking on the phone one day to one of the largest plastics company in the U.S. I'm always exploring new materials, just because I love it. I'm kinda fascinated by it. Again, I'm just wired that way. So I'm on the phone with this guy from one of the largest plastics company in the U.S. and I rattle off a bunch of different material names to him on the phone. There's this long pause, then he says, "You should come to work here. You know about this stuff than we do." I give you my word of honor this is a true report. So yeah, OCD.

Okay, back to your question. Blue Chip uses a dark chocolate brown colored material called DuPont Vespel SP-1. SP-1 is what is known as the "virgin" or "unfilled" grade (the two terms are used interchangeably throughout the plastics industry). This material costs -- hold your breath -- $1100 for a sheet that is 10" x 10" x 1/4". That is a real number and anyone can get this quote from a distributor on Monday. DuPont has only two (or possibly three, not exactly sure) official distributors in the U.S., one east of the Mississippi, one west. The distribtution is completely locked up. Not only that, these master distributors are held to DuPont pricing. The prices are controlled. If you're out there flagrantly discounting Vespel, you're gone. In fact a few years they fired one of the largest plastics distributors in North America (name withheld) for exactly this reason and other, and contracted with another one. They play hard ball.

Now, I'm not a fool. There ARE discounts, but they are very minimal; we're talking percentage points, not 25% off, nothing like that. The only people who get major discounts (these numbers are a closely held secret) are the major DOD folks -- Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup, etc. They have huge DOD bank and money to burn (remember the $800 toilet seats?), so they get the best deal going. But since the DuPont material is an exclusive, patented formulation, there is no motivation for them to give away the store, and I'm certain I don't.

Continued in next post.....

[Charmed Life Picks]

Before I proceed, if there are any engineers out there reading this who know more about this stuff than I do, please come in and contribute to the discussion.

Now, there are some other ways to buy the DuPont material, but they don't sell the resin to anyone and have only a couple extruders in North America. So you can't injection mold this stuff. You buy it in stock shapes and must machine it from those shapes. And you couldn't extrude it anyway, as it's done with a process called "sintering," which is done under incredible pressure and, as I understand it, even more incredible temperatures (I have heard the number 1000 degrees Farenheit bandied about, but I wouldn't swear to it).

Before I forget, one other thing. The brown "virgin" grade is the bottom of the Vespel line. They have at least ten other grades available, all of them "filled" with different additives and all of them more expensive; some are almost triple the price of the brown, so a $100 guitar pick is definitely in our future, possibly even $150-200. No, I'm not kidding. You can tell the other grades on sight, as they are all either black or dark gray; the bottom of the line is the only one that is brown. Some of these grades are special formulations made to spec for certain companies or manufacturers and are not published on their site. And some of them have some VERY interesting additives that could possibly make an incredible plectrum. The problem? They're too dang expensive to experiment with.

Another problem with a material this expensive is material loss during machining (it's known as "kerf loss"). I've spent three years of heavy research on this and the best I've found in the real world is a material loss of around .50 mm (.020") on the cut, per pick. Got that? If you make a guitar pick at 1.0 mm, you're losing half a pick or more for every pick made. Lovely. AND this is one of the most brutal plastics on the planet. It eats $200 CNC blades like Pop Tarts. So even if you find a method for cutting something thinner that .50 mm, good luck: it will snap that blade faster than you can blink.

Oh, and one other lovely feature of this stuff: when it heats up during cutting it tends to "grab" the cutting blade like some kind of malevolent force and create resistance -- and then the blade snaps.

If someone knows how to consistently cut this stuff with under a .50 mm loss, please call me, and I will put your children through college. Is it out there? I hope so. But I've talked to some of the most knowledgable people in the plastics industry -- dozens of them -- and no one knows how to do it.

So Pine, no, I don't know Blue Chips inner workings nor would I presume to assert that. But I DO know about the material they use and how it is cut and machined. And we're not even factoring in blems, B stock, fabrication mistakes, a machine going haywire, a CNC blade exploding and taking out the equivalent of ten picks of material (oh yes, it happens; I've SEEN it happen), which is the natural life of a machinist. Not a pretty picture.

One other reason you can't get a good discount on this stuff, told to me by several engineers. DuPont was the first to market with this material; it was unique to the industry at the time (30-40 years ago?). So all the DOD mil-spec manufacturers speced it into their blueprints and designs. So guess what? They won't use anything else. Why? They have more money than you can count, and there is no motivation to change. Since it's worked from day one, they'll keep using it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

That's enough for tonight. Questions are welcome. If you've read this far, then you too have no life.

G'Night,
Scott

[MChild62]

This is a wonderful thread. Incredible how much I took for granted, assuming all plastic or other synthetic material picks were just punched out of sheets of different materials (like the "pick-maker" devices you can buy on eBay to punch pics out of a credit card).

I had no idea about the amount of labor or the costs of materials for high-end picks.



A few questions (and no need to answer... these just surfaced as I was reading):



1. Custom-designed picks? My wife recently went to a shoe shop and had her foot measurements taken for some shoes that are being built to her exact size. Given all the labor and amount of personal taste/feel/sound that goes into a preference for a plectrum, is there any market for picks shaped specifically to a person's hand and playing style? Or is it just a case of, there are so many choices out there in size and shape the we all effectively customize on our own through trial and error?



2. This super-expensive material that Scott and others use for their high-end products... what's its main use? Wings of fighter jets? Space elevators?



3. Does nano technology and advanced materials development offer anything interesting for the future of pics? Super-thin (but super hard) graphene pics?



4. Buffalo horn as material? I recently bought some from a brand called Flexi-tones, which are one of few that Amazon sells in Italy. Love the feel and grip, even a bit more than the Dunlops I've been using. But Scott's comment about Hawksbill turtles and conservation has me worrying. I hope there's no issue with these buffalo. I just assumed it was the horns from buffalo being raised for food.



I'm already surfing Amazon looking for some of the picks suggested in this thread. Not much available here!

[N+1]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I guess it depends on your picking style. If you tend to do a straight up down type strum, then a lighter pick may well be better, but I play a more bluegrass /country style picking single notes, runs, hammer-ons and pull -offs and I find I need the accuracy that a 1 m/m or thicker pick gives me.

This is, I know, the sort of thing that is said about the value of thick picks, and yet ... I don't play with just a straight up and down strum. I used to, several decades ago, but now I tend to play in a loose, hybrid style that has just naturally evolved over the years: strums, runs, single and hammer notes, responding to the feel of the moment rather than any planned sequence that requires accuracy. It is, I confess, a lazy way to play, but it is what it is, and the point about the thinner pick is, I suspect, that it lets me get away with it.

I think Martin Carthy said once that people don't realise that a lot of what they think they hear is only suggested or implied by the player. Now, he's a real guitarist and I'm a mere bumbling amateur, but I think, in a feeble way, much further down the scale, that I know what he means. And the thin pick allows me to suggest and imply that I know what I'm doing when really I don't. That's my theory, anyway!

Just one extra point: if I could find the perfect pick (for me) for £50, I'd buy it. My choice has nothing to do with the cheapness of the pick.

[N+1]

Originally Posted by Charmed Life Picks

N:
Hey, if it works for you, then there's no issue. You've found something that consistently gives you the performance and feel you enjoy. End of journey.

That's terrific,

Scott

I think that is possibly the case, but the idea that one can get better tone, better articulation etc, out of a guitar is a beguiling one. And I don't like the extra noise you get from a thin pick, so I haven't actually achieved Personal Pick Perfection.

I daresay I'll be trying out more picks in 6 months, a year: "In search of the noiseless thin pick..."

[HHP]

Originally Posted by MChild62

This is a wonderful thread. Incredible how much I took for granted, assuming all plastic or other synthetic material pics were just punched out of sheets of different materials (like the "pick-maker" devices you can buy on eBay to punch pics out of a credit card). No idea about the amount of labor or the costs of these high-end materials.

A few questions (and no need to answer... these just surfaced as I was reading):

1. Custom-designed picks? My wife recently went to a shoe shop and had her foot measurements taken for some shoes that are being built to her exact size. Given all the labor and amount of personal taste/feel/sound that goes into a preference for a plectrum, is there any market for picks shaped specifically to a person's hand and playing style? Or is it just a case of, there are so many choices out there in size and shape the we all effectively customize on our own through trial and error?

2. This super-expensive material that Scott and others use for their high-end products... what's its main use? Wings of fighter jets? Space elevators?

3. Does nano technology and advanced materials development offer anything interesting for the future of pics? Super-thin (but super hard) graphene pics?

4. Buffalo horn as material? I recently bought some from a brand called Flexi-tones, which are one of few that Amazon sells in Italy. Love the feel and grip, even a bit more than the Dunlops I've been using. But Scott's comment about Hawksbill turtles and conservation has me worrying. I hope there's no issue with these buffalo. I just assumed it was the horns from buffalo being raised for food.

I'm already surfing Amazon looking for some of the picks suggested in this thread. Not much available here!

I'll take a shot.

You certainly can get picks made to your specifications. If you are a big name artist, manufacturers will turn out "signature" picks that bear your name. If you are just Joe Neckbone, you have to pay to have this done and it is very costly and be willing to buy enough (1000's) to make it worth their while. Some smaller boutique makers can turn out customs in small quantities. One I know of is EML picks. I believe he will do custom jobs or match an existing pick. You can contact him via his website.

You can also get standard picks customized with personalized graphics.I had these made up several years ago by Clayton to both use and give away as mementos.



Most of the "super plastics", as I get it, are used as bearings/bushings in high heat applications. Same properties make them very slick on the strings.

Everybody seems to be looking for the next super material but playing instruments does require some different characteristics that thin and hard don't cover. One of the absolute best materials for picks was developed in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, Casein...AKA Alladinite. I've personally found it to be superior to all the "super plastics" in terms of musical applications.

Never found any bovine horn to work well. Its thin and will vary wildly based on the particular animal. Overall, I think picks have moved way beyond animal by-products.

[Pitar]

I see the green and hawksbill turtles when diving off the Florida coast. I had a rather large green sea turtle show much interest in eating my swim fins on one dive. It took a few minutes before it lost interest. I burned up so much air laughing and swimming evasively that I had to end the dive prematurely. My dive buddy (wife) called it the best dive we've ever had.

Even if I did use flat picks I couldn't imagine anyone being okay with harvesting turtles for pick material.

[Bikewer]

For many years now, I’ve been using the rather ubiquitous Dunlop Nylon .88 mm.
When I started playing, back in the 70s, like everyone else I tried everything I could get my hands on. I was primarily doing bluegrass-style flatpicking, which requires not only hard “boom-chicka-boom” strumming but fast, accurate single string work, usually on medium gauge strings.

My local shop even got in a supply of actual tortoise-shell picks one year, before they were banned.

I found that I liked a stiff, “slick” pick with a bit of a point to give that clear, ringing tone that most bluegrass players seem to prefer. Thin picks simply don’t provide this.
Thick, rounded “jazz” picks provide a rather muted tone that is perfect for jazz.. But not for bluegrass.
For me, the Dunlop provides the solution and I see no reason to change. Stiff enough for single-note work, slick enough to “bounce” off the strings, good clear bass notes.
And, they wear like iron and are dead cheap and available everywhere.

I mostly play fingerstyle on nylon-string instruments now, but I still dig out my steel-string and run through a few BG standards.

[Big*Al]

Originally Posted by Charmed Life Picks

. . . If someone knows how to consistently cut this stuff with under a .50 mm loss, please call me, and I will put your children through college. Is it out there? I hope so. But I've talked to some of the most knowledgable people in the plastics industry -- dozens of them -- and no one knows how to do it. . . .

G'Night,
Scott

I'm an engineer in the plastic industry. I've been extensively involved in material recycling. I have no personal experience with Vespel though.

If this material is indeed thermoplastic, then it can almost certainly be reused. The waste plastic from cutting could be melted again. Finished shape purchased material could probably also be granulated back into the raw material state again. The resulting granular material could possibly be heated and pressed into a finished shape of a pick with no waste . . . perhaps by a compression molding process. Or . . . it could be heated and pressed into a block that could be sliced and diced to make picks.

This would take some R&D, but if you have access to waste shavings from a cutting operation, then your raw material would essentially be free.

By the way, my kids are already through college, so you're safe. :-)

[Beakybird]

I find this thread pretty interesting, and I'm glad about the apparent removal of personal attacks from the thread.
I just started practicing with a Dunlop Primetone 0.88mm, and I find I get a little better control than I did with a cheap medium pick.
I'm ready to branch out, but my picking doesn't yet reach enough bpm to justify a $20 plectrum.