Guitar Pick - Good for Pick Slides/Scrapes

B

Bman

Power User
I've used 1.0mm blue Dunlop tortex picks for the last 20 years or more. The thicker pick has never produced a good pick slide/scrape and recently my wife bought me some EVH .60mm nylon picks. They're soooooo light but kind of fun to tinker with especially playing a guitar with 9's and they do awesome pick/slides. So I was trying to do some googling to see if there's a thicker product with thinner edges. Maybe beveled or something? Any of you guys come across something like this or actually use it? The pick slide isn't all that important but it is an ingredient in 90% of any Van Halen song I'm playing around on. And they do sound cool.
 
I'd think the thickness is more important, so just take a file and hit the edges. I mean, really, a thin pick, after a few good pick slides, is garbage anyway. But yeah, a thicker pick doesn't do pick slides/scrapes very well. I imagine with all the choices out there, somebody's making a good one, but since it has taken me so much trial & error to land on the pick I want to use, I just file the edge a bit. I use a 1.5mm JP Jazz 3.
 
I've played with a stainless steel pick for decades. It'll do string scrapes forever. (With a plastic pick for scale and to show how I modify the shape.)

Steel Pick 1 - 1024.jpg
 
Just don't scrape the strings more than once or twice a night. I know a guy who did it 8 times one night, four times in one song. Then played the Woody Woodpecker song between songs a couple times.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Just don't scrape the strings more than once or twice a night. I know a guy who did it 8 times one night, four times in one song. Then played the Woody Woodpecker song between songs a couple times.
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I scraped at least 10 times yesterday. I'm usually the last one to know when I've got a problem. It's other people that tell me and even then I'm in denial. Too much cowbell and too much pick scrapes can be a bad thing. Everything in moderation, so I'm told. ;)
 
A mate of mine makes picks out of stone. They are fabulous. Burgs has done a video on them. I have several, from petrified wood to jasper, from quartz to all sorts of other rarified stone. If you Google "stone picks" you'll find lots of others as well, in case you're not in Australia where I am (and where these S-Tone Picks are made). Here is Burgs' video:

 
I find I switch between the yellow (0.73) and blue (1.0) Tortex picks. Though I seem to only use picks half the time, and almost never on bass, so who knows.
I do agree the thinner ones are better for that pick-scrape noise.
 
shemihazazel said:
It'll pay for itself over time because their picks don't wear down.
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I came in today. It's a nice pick. Is it a $35 dollar pick? I guess the market determines so. It does have thinner edges than my blue tortex and both are 1.0mm. And I'm sure what your say is true, that it rarely if ever wears out. That's nice because feel the tortex blue's get a little dull on the pointed side. But I have bags of those laying around. I put the over/under on me losing this pick at 2 weeks. In the meantime I'll see if I can put a dent in the thing and jam to some VH....lol. I didn't look into the hammett model yet. Does it come with an autowah? :tonguewink: Sorry, I couldn't help it.
 
Bman said:
I came in today. It's a nice pick. Is it a $35 dollar pick? I guess the market determines so. It does have thinner edges than my blue tortex and both are 1.0mm. And I'm sure what your say is true, that it rarely if ever wears out. That's nice because feel the tortex blue's get a little dull on the pointed side. But I have bags of those laying around. I put the over/under on me losing this pick at 2 weeks. In the meantime I'll see if I can put a dent in the thing and jam to some VH....lol. I didn't look into the hammett model yet. Does it come with an autowah? :tonguewink: Sorry, I couldn't help it.
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I always keep mine in a little box so they don't go missing. The other thing I really like about them is the grip. I'm a pretty heavy picker, and slippage has always been a big problem for me with regular picks. So I have to grip them like a vice and my hand gets tired and sore. Whatever material Blue Chip makes theirs from, I can hold them very gently and they don't budge regardless of how hard I hit the strings.
 
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