TFW you forget how much pick choice affects tone

Unless you have a robot to play guitar I think it will be really hard to make the playing consistent enough for a fair comparison.

A person will most likely play differently depending on size, shape, feel and response of the pick.

Then we could say that pick shape also has an impact on tone. We will be evaluating the material+shape complex. As long as we keep the player invariant we will be actually studying the pick.

Get your point, though. Too much noise maybe. Still, if people prefer a pick over another, we should be able to find a measurable difference... Even if not constant among players.
 
One interesting thing is hearing the physical click of the pick in the room vs what’s going through the fractal. You might hear a lot of the pick attack and think it’s a lot more dramatic than it may actually be.
 
My long strange trip took me to the Fender Tortuga medium. Because I switch from electric to acoustic a lot during the gig, I needed something that worked and sounded good on both, and that's been the one for me for the last year or so.
 
Then we could say that pick shape also has an impact on tone. We will be evaluating the material+shape complex. As long as we keep the player invariant we will be actually studying the pick.

Get your point, though. Too much noise maybe. Still, if people prefer a pick over another, we should be able to find a measurable difference... Even if not constant among players.
I'm really just talking about having no deviation in the playing.

That's why good amp and modeler blind tests use a DI signal. Because then it's the exact same "performance".

Except for a robot I can't think of a way to "DI" picking :)
 
A long strange trip, indeed... many years ago, I was expressing frustration with the flatwounds on my jazz box, and someone handed me a Dunlop 208: Wow, that was just the ticket: Smoothed the attack characteristic just right without going dull, and getting all the richness of the sustain. Great for flat picking electric bass too. Tortex gets the call more often for roundwounds and solid bodies. By now I've got probably 50 types of pick, from leather and felt to carved jade and a fossilized trilobite. Never boring.

Bass player here as well (after 30 years being a guitar player). A month ago I bought a pack of the Bog Street Axe Cut picks to try them out. I heard the stories of how the material lasted forever and stayed glued to your fingers. So far I love them and I play on rounds. I’ve still been on the first pick I pulled outta pack and I’m an aggressive player so material is holding up well. I got the Axe Cut’s which are 2mm on the bevels and .6mm on the string side. I really love the attack and natural compression you get when you “play through” the strings. The design with the open center hole keeps it firmly in your fingers when playing hard. Anywho...was just throwing in some .02 on the matter with my recent experience with these picks.
 
I'm really just talking about having no deviation in the playing.

That's why good amp and modeler blind tests use a DI signal. Because then it's the exact same "performance".

Except for a robot I can't think of a way to "DI" picking :)

Fair enough. Agreed on the robot to 100% accurately characterize pick influence in tone (although that would take out of the test a potential player-pick interaction factor). There could be other methods such as averaging which probably do not make a lot of sense in this context.

However, my point is that deviations in playing happen in the "real life" outside of the test as well. So for pick choice to actually matter in real life, we should still be able to hear a difference past playing deviations. If not, wouldn't that effectively mean that pick influence in tone is much smaller than ordinary picking deviations, and as such negligible under real playing conditions?
 
I remember back in my drumming days I would spend a lot of time working on consistent dynamics. That's all pretty much related to distance...keep the stick an inch away from he drum for ppp and raise it up two feet for fff, etc. Might not be a bad exercise on guitar either. Establish the quietest you can consistently play, the loudest you can consistently play, and then find some consistent levels within. You want to establish and commit to muscle memory so you don't think about it.

Anyways, I'd say if you need a robot to hear the differences it won't matter. And different picks will make you pick differently anyway.

I just know for whatever reason when I use Flow picks I sound dull.
 
I have been playing Jim Dunlop "Nylon" for my whole life and ordered Dunlop "Max Grip" last time by mistake. They look similar, but since then I was less satisfied with my playing and my tone. Today I compared them side by side and in comparison the Max Grip sounds, like I was wearing a glove while playing. -And the old Nylons seem to last longer.
Thanx for that eye opener.
 
There's also the feel aspect of the pick: some just glide over the strings and give a very uniform energy transfer to the string, others grab or show up even the smallest variation in how the string is plucked. Some - like pesos and sixpence - have a firm bite sonically, but also chew the strings enough to demolish them quickly, which may not matter to those pack a day users, but for those of us that try to get at least a couple of weeks out of a set, a no go on the coinage.

Lately, I've been trying the Fred Kelly Speed and Slick thumb picks. I play finger style a lot, guitar and bass, hadn't found a thumb pick that works well as a flat pick: which is precisely what I need it to do well: but both of these fit and work so much better (on a toe like thumb), one is likely to be a great fit for the job, as I primarily want to be able to shift between flat picking and fingerstyle, and not a hybrid approach with a flatpick that eliminates the possibility of rasgueado and so much else by keeping the index finger tied to the pick.
 
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Then we could say that pick shape also has an impact on tone.
Shape definitely affects tone. For years, after switching back to standard sized Star Picks plectrums, I used the orange thin-medium thickness and the shoulder of the pick to get more meat and stiffness. Very easy to find on most surfaces when dropped.

I recently switched to GatorGrip and went a size or two thicker, and found that sounds better using the pointier tip, with a bit more sparkle overall and finer differences in string harmonic content from picking at different points along the string than when using the shoulder of the thinner plectrum. Darned shame they color code them by thickness, though. Both of them are shades of purple, and darned hard to find if set down on something dark or black....
 
However, my point is that deviations in playing happen in the "real life" outside of the test as well. So for pick choice to actually matter in real life, we should still be able to hear a difference past playing deviations. If not, wouldn't that effectively mean that pick influence in tone is much smaller than ordinary picking deviations, and as such negligible under real playing conditions?
Anyways, I'd say if you need a robot to hear the differences it won't matter. And different picks will make you pick differently anyway.
My posts are specifically referring to a blind test scenario...

Of course I DO think there are many deviations during normal playing and those probably have more (or at least as much) affect than pick construction.

Again, my point is that for a blind test to be fair you want to eliminate those as much as possible ;)
 
I, like many of you apparently, am partial to the Dunlop Jazz III ultex picks. I had been using their standard ultex 1.14 mm picks for several years but decided to go through my pick collection again and realized that I play better with the small and pointy Jazz III shape. I then purchased the Jazz III variety pack and concluded that the Jazz III ultex was my favorite of the bunch, but the standard nylon Jazz III is also very good. I seem to get a slightly warmer tone with the ultex picks. This was most apparent when playing acoustic guitar.
 
You should try Herdim or Dunlop Nylon (with the grippy bumps). Turn the pick around and pluck the string with the grippy bumps. This is like 25% of what makes The Edge sound like The Edge.
 
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