Choosing the right flat pick

hsand23
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Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:13 pm

I posted this question yesterday on the wrong board (sorry, I'm new here). Thanks to the 2 people who responded to my post, here it is again in the right place (I hope):

I'm an intermediate player who has always held my pick with 3 fingers. I switched to holding my pick just the way Neil recommends in his lessons, but I'm having trouble maintaining a good grip.When I strum fast on songs like "Down On The Corner" the pick just rolls between my fingers, or slips out of my grip. I started with a Fender medium pick. Then I tried a Dunlop .88mm max-grip pick and a Snarling Dogs .88mm pick (both have special surfaces that are supposed to be easier to hold on to) - but that hasn't helped. I was thinking about switching to either a thicker or thinner pick. Would that help? Or, can anyone recommend a pick that is easier to grip?
Thanks,
Harold


coomba
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Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:38 pm

G'day Harold
and welcome to TG if you haven't already been welcomed.
I noticed no one has responded to your thread yet so I thought I would give my thoughts.
Firstly your not alone with this problem as I think you will find most of us have had the problem or still do after many years of practice.
I also tried Neils method in order to fix that slippery pick and I found it difficult at first (still do) but three things that Neil mentions that helped me was to

1st place the corner of the pick so that it wedges into the1st crease of you index finger.
2nd angle the pick face away from the direction you are strumming ie point pick up when strumming down and vice verse using your wrist.
3rd don't hold too tight, this may seem odd but the pick needs to move a little, if its too tight it hits the stings harder and then the impact and friction of the strings will help dislodge it .

I have tried lots of different textures and have found none of them really helped until I worked on my technique.

I also changed to a thicker pick, at one stage I was down to a 0.4mm it an attempt to fix the problem but all that did was ruin my technique and sound lousy.
So I decided to go thicker I now use a Dunlop Tortex Green 0.88mm. again only because on several occasions Neil had mentioned using a thicker pick ( I think he uses a Dunlop Tortex Blue 1.0 mm)
This was very difficult at first for me and I think these picks have no grip at all but I kept at it just working on technique and slowly things improved.
I don't know if any of this helps you but that;s what I have tried, ( I think angle of impact is very important).

Oh and for the record I think Brain Picks have the best grip/texture although I still use the greens now.
This subject comes up every so often but I'm sure there are lots of others out there asking the same question.

anyway hopefully some of the more experienced players out there could help.
Good luck
Cheers Scott


hsand23
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 11:10 pm

Scott,
Thanks for the thoughtful explanation. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who has this problem. I'll follow your advice and focus on my technique.
Harold


tovo
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 11:21 pm

One more piece of advice if I may. Type "Pick" into the "search forum" area (located top right hand side) and you can scroll through the many threads relating to this topic and probably pick up some very useful information. The search feature is a good one to use as these questions rather obviously come up quite a bit and there is more than a year of forum chat you can look at.

Cheers.


Hydroman52
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Mon Nov 22, 2010 6:12 am

I’m glad someone started this post. I was working up the following post, but was hesitating to put it up thinking that no one else had the problem of hanging onto the pick or it being uncomfortable to hold. So here goes. . . . .

Back when I first started learning guitar, I’d strum with the nail of my index finger. After a while, I realized that it was better for me to use a pick and got some thin ones because some of my friends were using them. Then I took bluegrass flat-picking lessons and was introduced to heavy picks by my instructor. He stressed better control. It took some getting used to, but he was right. At that time, I bought a dozen tortoise shell picks (yes, real tortoise shell before all the threatened and endangered stuff in the 1970s) that had been laying around their store for eons for about fifty cents to a dollar apiece (a small fortune for a young teenager at that time). Those picks were between 1.0mm and 1.5mm thick and a bit smaller than the ones that I currently use as I recall. I lost the last one about two or three years ago when it didn’t come back with a guitar that I loaned out. I was taught the proper way to hold the pick during my lessons and that is the way I hold it now. At first, it was uncomfortable and it frequently flew out of my hand, but it was much better to stick with it as I did finally develop better control.

So, I was on a search for replacements. Tortoise shell now are out of my price range and the close imitators are around $20 US. I would go broke at those prices considering all the picks that magically disappear on me. I tried a whole bunch of different kinds and even tried lighter picks (less than 1.0mm thick) which turned out to be a mistake for me. The mock shell (celluloid?) picks (Fender, Planet Waves) would break when I got too aggressive. At the moment, I have settled in with Dunlop Tortex picks 1.0mm (the blue ones) and have just recently moved up to 1.14mm (the purple ones). An interesting note, the first time I used the 1.14mm over the 1.0mm was at a jam session with friends. The picks had just come in the mail a few hours before and I opened the baggie and started playing our first song with one. It felt very uncomfortable and kept flying out of my hand (there’s still one lying on the floor of my friend’s music room somewhere). Finally, I had to grab a 1.0mm out of my mic stand to finish the evening, because I just couldn’t hang onto the thicker one. Since then (about 5 weeks ago), I have practiced regularly with the 1.14mm on all my guitars with medium gauge strings (still using the 1.0mm on the light gauge strings) and can now hang onto it. The lesson here is . . . . don’t give up on something if you don’t get the hang of it in the first couple of practice sessions. It may take a little longer to adapt.

One thing that you may find helpful is reshaping the pick. I’ve been having trouble with the Tortex picks bruising my index finger when practicing for 4 hours or more. I used my chainsaw tooth file (a round file with a wooden handle) and raker file (just a flat file with a wooden handle) to take a bit off the top to make it a little more ergonomic where I grab and hang onto it (click on photo links below). I look at it as everyone is different and sometimes we have to do a little tailoring to make things fit properly. If you try this, you may sacrifice a half dozen or so before you get it right, so have a few extras on hand. Once I had found the shape that was most comfortable, that one became my template and I only use it as a model to make more. Now I can play all day without fatigue.

For some reason, my photos aren't displaying when I try to insert a photo link, so, you can see the first one showing the files I use and the evolution of the modification here:

Files and picks

Here is a close-up of the picks (Left to right - unmodified 1.0mm blue, 1st attempt 1.0mm blue, 2nd attempt .73mm yellow, final product 1.14mm purple):

Close-up of picks

Please excuse the mess, it's just detritus from doing a number of these. It's best to smooth all sharp edges so they don't jab you when you're playing. I use a little pocket knife to scrape all the fluffy stuff from the final product and get everything finished properly. I am thinking of using an electric shaping tool with a metal bit to rough them out in the future, however, I have used these things on these types of materials before and they tend to heat things up at the higher speeds and melt the plastics.

I suppose you could also use the file to roughen the surface or put horizontal grooves into the pick so it doesn’t slip as much. I have seen other things advertised such as Gorilla Snot (what a name!) that are supposed to help, but I have never tried them. The shape that I have selected seems to lock the pick into place and keeps it from spinning and flopping around.

So, that's how I've solved my pick problems. You can bet that if I have troubles in the future, I'll get out the tools and reshape things.

Hope this helps,
Hydroman52


hsand23
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Mon Nov 22, 2010 3:33 pm

Thanks for the post. Are the Dunlop Tortex picks textured in some way that helps you hold on to them?
Harold


AndyT
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Mon Nov 22, 2010 3:45 pm

For me, if the pick hurts your fingers, then maybe you're holding it too tightly.
I purchased a roll of Tred-Safe. Its the no-slip coating they put on stairs to keep you from slipping. I cover my picks with this leaving the picking area exposed. No slips, no flying picks.


Hydroman52
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Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:45 pm

hsand23 wrote:
Thanks for the post. Are the Dunlop Tortex picks textured in some way that helps you hold on to them?
Harold
Hi Harold,

The Tortex have a matted finish when new that might help a little, but after a short period, they seem to shine up a bit for me and any benefit there is lost. My solution wasn’t to make the pick less slippery, but to make it fit me better and make sure I was using the right technique to hold it. I reviewed Neil’s lesson on how to hold a pick, and that is how I was taught in my Bluegrass lessons and how I have always held it since I was a teenager. If you haven’t already seen this lesson, you can find it here:

Neil tells us all how to hold a pick

I believe this is a free lesson, so everyone should be able to see it. If you aren’t using this technique, I would highly recommend it. It may take you a week or a month or even a year to get really comfortable with it, but it is probably the first and most important basic skills that you should know when using a pick. It does give you an unfair advantage over those that don’t practice it.

If you find that you must use something else (short of super-gluing it to your fingers), I would try Andy’s suggestion with the Tred-Safe stuff. It's a good idea. He's a smart guy and probably hangs out in the hardware store a lot.

Just some of my thoughts . . . . hope it helps,

Hydroman52

PS When you figure out this puzzle, please do a follow-up. I'm sure there are others that will be interested in the solution.


Hydroman52
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Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:57 pm

AndyT wrote:
For me, if the pick hurts your fingers, then maybe you're holding it too tightly.
Hi Andy,

At first, I thought that I was holding the pick too tight, however, the problem arose when I went to a larger pick. As you may recall from my other reply, my tortoise shell picks were a bit smaller (length and width), probably thicker, and even more shiny (slipperier) than the Tortex, but I never had a problem with pain or hanging on to them. When I started using the new picks, it felt like I was using a big club. This caused me to choke-up on them (think of baseball and choking up on the bat) so that the same length of the pick was exposed as with the tortoise ones. This appeared to be the crux of the problem. The top of the pick was now resting higher on my index finger and that was where the pain/bruising was occurring. I thought about calling it an irritation, but it was actually a small bruise on my index finger right at the end of the pick. When I moved up to the thicker pick, this seemed to exacerbate the problem. I actually tried to shorten the pick at the string contact end so I wouldn’t have to choke-up, but that made the pick less pointy and I didn’t care for that. What it came down to was quite simple. Remove the part of the pick where the bruising occurred. This seems to be working, and, as an added bonus, the pick locks into place and is more stable. I plan to try moving up to thicker picks if I can find some that I like. I’ll probably stick with the same size/shape and the same modification.

After looking at this closer, I would guess that the pick is nothing more than a small lever and all I was doing was moving the fulcrum and changing the location of force applied to gain a better advantage. This probably helped a bit in keeping the pick from coming loose. I’m sure there are others out there who could analyze this to death to figure out the how and why it works for me, but I’m just accepting it and will keep practicing.

The Tred-Safe idea is a good one, too. But I think that this is solving the problem for me. If not, I will try your idea next.

Thanks,

Hydroman52


frybaby
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Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:12 pm

Andy,

For me finding the right pick was like finding the right strings, it take a lot of trial and error.

One difference, I have found is that I use different picks depending on the and sound , volume and strumming technique I want, which is often determined by my mood.

Not withstand, I have narrowed the field to one favorite pick brand, and I use different thickness to accommodate my mood and strumming .

I've had a similar question and experience with pick slippage between my fingers and have tried numerous experiments to get a grip on my pick. For search on the subject is quite enlightening.

Ever mindful however that the best thing to do would be to developed the right technique for hold the pick so I did not have to worry about some gripping device or textured pick, I worked a lot on pick holding technique.

That said, I still do modify my pick (DUNLAP TORTEX- the translucent amber looking picks with a Rino picture).

I get a very small fine point nail the type that holds pictures in to a frame) and drive hole from both side of the pick, so that the rough edge that the nail create upon exiting the pick occurs on both side. I use a circular patter for the punched holes with equal number of holes alternating on both sides.

It work great for me, but from my effort to learn how to hold the pick correctly I seldom use the perforated pick, but when I do the work very well and friend like them alot.

Well there it is.
Frybaby


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