Pickin’ On Picks; or A Guide To Guitar Picks.

It’s Preference

The long and short answer of this is truly, It’s a matter of preference depending on what you play (lead or rhythm) what style you play, string gauge, and many other factors.

If you’ve been playing a while you may already know, perhaps your looking for another way to augment your current playing style with a new type of pick by reading this article but as a beginner you about to discover that guitar picks or plectrums are a large part of your guitar playing.  Having said that choosing from different shapes, styles, materials and designs your about to find out that it can be hard to know which one to gravitate to.  This is one situation where I personally recommend trial and error.  Lots and lots of trial and error.  You really just have to find one you like.  My current and favorite pick style was given to me at a jam session with a “Hey try this”.  I’ve been using it ever since. Prior to this I was using a dunlop medium regular shape made out of DuPont Delrin. I’ve never looked back.

Factors To Consider

Thickness, shape, what its made out of, cost, comfort, usability, texture. These are the main things to consider in a pick.  In the beginning I just wanted something that looked cool with skulls or some other nasty looking thing on it.  I quickly realized that the cool factor was really stupid considering that no one looks at the pick I use while I’m using it (Again this is my opinion, You could have a separate batch made to throw out at gigs that look cool or have your name on them).  

What I Use And Why

I have used stone picks, metal picks, picks made out of credit cards, picks made from coins, those trusty bread closure thingys, anything and everything but my favorite is the Clayton 1.52 mm standard shape made out of Acetal (I’ll be honest, I really have no idea what this is. Best guess it’s some kind of plastic or nylon).  This pick is thick and hard. it has very little flex. The fact that it has very little flex gives it some serious bite when playing leads.  It also forced me to improve my right hand technique by becoming very conscious about how I strum and pick.  The lack of flex gives me the ability to really bring out the dynamics of soft or hard picking/strumming.  A very light pick with tons of flex in my opinion seems to equalize all notes and make them all the same volume which equals very little in the dynamics department.

A Place To Start

If you are mostly playing rhythm guitar and strumming start with a lighter gauge pick.  Sure, as I stated earlier I believe they even out the volume but that’s not really a bad thing if you predominantly play rhythm.

If you mix it up a bit (rhythm and lead) start with a medium pick. Honestly it’s where I started and played for close to 10 years before my current pick was tossed to me at that jam session.

If you want to really get some powerful attack then move up to a heavier pick.

I like the standard shape but again you should try others