The problem with Alaska Piks

[TBman]

for me was/is that they are too thick. They keep hitting each other on the sides. My normal space between the sides of my fingers I guess is narrow when I play guitar and they kept getting caught on each other.

Solution pending.

Every so often I have been working on them, sanding them down on the sides. I have this Pedi thing I found at CVS. I knew this thing would come in handy one day so I picked it up for my guitar gear case. For $20 I couldn't go wrong

Pedi thingamagig

As I work on them, they are getting better and better. The first thing I ground down was the ribbing they have near the bottom. If I can get them down to maybe to 2/3 or 1/2 their thickness on the sides, they could be usable by me.

[Matt G]

I've noticed the same thing with Alaska picks and with metal finger picks. It used to annoy me a lot. I think I must hold my fingers farther apart than I used to, because I don't notice it much anymore.

Or maybe it's because I switched to a thumb and two-finger (from thumb and three-finger) sytle, and with only two finger picks there's not as much bumping together.

[Christian Reno]

Not sure if you use 2 or 3 of them, but using 3 of them gets very clumsy with the way they spread your finger spacing while picking. I tried them many years ago when I first saw Chris Proctor using them. He made them work wonderfully, but I could never get past the side clearance issue, as you described.

I also got tired of the hassle of having to put them on and adjust them under the nail to get the best fit that would work and stay in that position. The fact that they require a bit of a nail to fit under takes away the purpose of finger picks to a degree for me. I was having issues with broken nails at the time and these picks didn’t help much when I had little to no nail left to begin with.

It sounds like you are getting close to shaping them in a manner that will work for you. Good luck!

[buddyhu]

I had similar problems when I first started using metal fingerpicks. I stuck with them because I liked the results my guitar teacher got with his fingerpicks. Over time, all the problems resolved themselves. Most problems resolved in 6-12 weeks, some lingered for a couple of years (specifically: occasionally catching a pick as if I were attempting a downstroke/downward brush, when my intended movement was just to position for the next upstroke...more likely to happen for me when playing for others, and nerves would disrupt my fine motor movements).