There's been endless threads about which pick we all are currently playing, or test-driving, but I thought it might be fun to hear some stories about all the picks we tried along the way. So here's mine.
I started out playing acoustic and electric guitar at 13, and then picked up the mandolin in college. So when I started on the mandolin, I had already moved (on guitar) from a good ol' Fender medium to one of the grey Dunlop nylon picks, the heaviest grey one. I figured, if it works for Doc, maybe it'll work for me! It became clear that there were a few other things preventing me from sounding like Doc Watson, but there I was, taking up the mandolin with my .88 grey Dunlop. I liked the nubby texture, which helped me keep it in one place between my fingers, but thought maybe I'd should try something a little heavier. So over to the black nylon 1.0 I went. Man, I liked that!
But then I found (or did I imagine it?) that sometimes when I was jamming outside on a hot summer day at a festival or a party, the pick seemed a little more mushy than it was normally. "That's because nylon conducts heat", someone with more experience with mandos, picks, hear conductivity, science, and so many other things told me. Is it true? I don't know any more about that now then I did then, but it was enough to send me to the pick bins at my local music store, where I found...Tortex!
I knew tortoiseshell was supposed to be awesome, but also awesomely bad for tortoises. So, I figured, this Tortex has got to be the thing! Lots of cool colors, too. And it has that kind of matte finish to it when it's new, so it didn't feel as slippy as the ol' Fender medium. So, off I went with the Tortexes, happily going back and forth between the blue and the purple, with an occasional detour for the green for Celtic music.
I rode the Tortex train happily for a good long while, and then one day, I was in the store (and when I say, "in the store", it's a euphemism for every fun, local music shop you like to go to and hang and check out gear, and shoot the bull and buy stuff, not necessarily the same store all the time), and right next to the Tortex picks, they had...Ultex.
Whoa, what is this? Is it the ultimate tex? I had to try it. Got me a few of them between 1.0 and 1.5, and I was convinced. Tortex to the bottom of the pick pile, and off I went, me and Ultex, picking away.
So, for all of these, I was still using the pointed corner of a standard pick shape. But I probably read an interview in Acoustic Guitar, or Frets, or somewhere, and read that some of the hipper cats were using the rounded corners of these picks. Can you even do that, I wondered? Turns out, the answer is yes! So I spun my pick, and while I was spinning my pick, I thought, what about those bigger picks that I see a lot of the hot bluegrass pickers using, with three equal/equalateral/equadistant corners? Maybe those would be cool, and I won't have this nagging feeling that I'm holding my pick upside down.
So off to the pick bins again, to find...the Pro-plec! Big equal-sided triangle, maybe 1.4, nice rounded tone, again I was a happy camper. Between the slightly more rounded corners and the thicker picks, I was getting a nicer, warmer tone that I liked, too.
But, then I got the chance to try a few of the actual tortoiseshell picks; one was a gift at a music party from a well-appointed host who had a bunch of 'em, and I thought, wow, this has the warmth, but also the brightness, hmm. Pick dissatisfaction reared its ugly head(stock) again.
So I need to insert here, the answer to the obvious question, why not just get a few tortoiseshell picks, or a fancy booteeker like the ol' Blue Chip, and be done with all this pick-switching malarkey? Well, in addition to the aforementioned "not-so-awesome for the tortoises" of the tortoiseshell, I wanted the kind of pick that I could buy 10 of, keep a few in my pocket, leave them hanging around, not fret about losing 'em, give one to a friend or a students. So I still have a couple nice tortoiseshells, and a sweet BC CT55 that one of my students gave me with my name on it (thanks, John!). But I still wanted my basic go-to. Plus, I'm more of a basic, go-to kind of guy.
At this point, I got a lovely A-5 from Girouard Mandolins, and Max gave me a bunch of their Girouard picks, which are Clayton acetyls, big equal triangle, somewhere in my sweet spot (1.2-1.4). Yesss! Plus, they don't have MY name on them, but the ones I get from Max have my mandolin's name on them, which is pretty cool, too. Problem solved.
Then (of course), my good buddy and Grateful Dead acoustic cover duo buddy Steve Roy sez to me, have you checked out these Primetones? He slipped me one, and yet again, I was hooked. The smooth brown ones, 1.2-1.4, big triangle. Not as easy to find as the Claytons, but only slightly more expensive (expensive enough to try not to lose them, but not expensive enough to care if you do). I think they have a slightly darker tone than the white Claytons, which reminds me of a joke about brown cows and white cows which I won't go into here, but in any case, my pocket now is loaded with the Claytons and the Primetones. Slight edge to the Primetones.
I left out a few things that I never really got into: Dawg picks, Wegens, Italian-style teardrops. I do like to pore through pick bins, especially the bins that have a bunch of leftover crap, in case you find something fun. I got a slightly larger Gibson black teardrop by doing that, which I do like a lot, but I'm not sure why.
So that's my pick story. If you have read this far, maybe you'd be interested in sharing your own pick journey. Much cheaper than a mandolin journey!
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