Pick Wisely
Picks are a type of plectrum, the catch-all term for an object used to strum or pluck a stringed instrument. Like many small accessories, they’re available in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of styles—enough for any musician to find the right one.
The modern era of guitar picks began in 1922, when Luigi D’Andrea accidentally made the first celluloid picks. He stumbled upon a few sheets of tortoiseshell-colored plastic and hammered out a few hundred heart-shaped trinkets, which he later sold to a music store.
Most of today’s commercially available picks are made from synthetic materials like celluloid, nylon, and Tortex (also known as Delrex), though some are still made from yesteryear favorites like stone, ivory, or tortoiseshell. Some players prefer a DIY approach, using plastic cut from or punched out of credit cards. Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top uses a Mexican Peso coin, polished and filed into the shape of a regular pick.
Picks also come in a wide variety of thicknesses (pun intended), usually measured in millimeters. Anything under .38 mm is considered very light, while any pick thicker than 1.5 mm is very heavy, though they come as thick as 3.5 mm. (For reference, a nickel is about two millimeters thick.)
Rhythm guitarists tend to prefer light-to-medium picks, something that has enough give to allow for fast strumming patterns. Jazz and other lead guitarists lean toward thicker picks for greater clarity, while acoustic guitarists like thicker picks for the added projection they provide. Bassists who use picks need rather thick models to move the heavier strings. Banjo players and finger style guitarists confuse the matter even further with their fingerpicks, which slip onto the ends of their fingers and also come in myriad materials, thicknesses, and designs.
The most common pick shape is one pointy, almost triangular, edge and two rounded edges, and most other designs are variations on a vaguely triangular shape. Some feature ridges or “friction coatings” to add an extra edge to pick scrapes and slides. Check out the US Patent Office’s records for a list of other models—at least 18 by our count.
It’s healthy for guitarists, banjoists, and other stringed instrumentalists to get caught up in the minutiae of plectra—they’re cheap and plentiful and can have a hugely positive effect on playing. They are, after all, the inflection point between the brain’s creativity and the hand’s physical execution.
