Guitar Picks - Which Material and Thickness to Choose

Generally, guitar picks are isosceles triangle-shaped ones
made up of different materials to play guitars. Guitar picks
are made up of various materials including, plastic, nylon,
rubber, tortoiseshell, bone, wood, felt, stone, polycarbonate,
Lexan and metal. Although different manufacturers use
different shapes, the most common shape is isosceles
triangle with highly rounded two equal corners and less
rounded third corner. You can also go for customized guitar
picks of your taste.

Customized Guitar Picks
Most of the guitar picks have a sort of imprint. This may
range from imprinting manufacturers' logos to fully
customized guitar picks for artists. In addition, guitar picks
come with signatures and logos of popular bands and
musicians. For example, Rick Nielson mass-distributed
customized guitar picks of "Cheap Trick," a renowned rock
band. Customized guitar picks evolved over time, as the
printing technology evolved. Even many guitar enthusiasts
started collecting various types of custom guitar picks, as
guitar picks have become more colorful with attractive designs
and look. You can get custom picks from music concerts,
since at times many guitarists throw their used guitar picks
on the crowd. You may even notice some celebrity guitarists
selling their guitar picks.

Guitar Picks Made of Bone
Bone guitar picks in general and many in particular favor
dinosaur bone guitar picks. These guitar picks made of
bone come in natural colors and some of them are even
transparent. Dinosaur bone guitar picks are hand-made
and fully fossilized or agatized. Bone guitar picks are
ideal for rock guitarists. However, these picks are
relatively costlier than picks made up of other materials.

Types of Picks and Music Styles
Guitarists use different types of picks of different thickness to
generate their desired sound. The thickness of the guitar also
depends on the kind of strings and playing styles. Electric
guitar players who play rock and metal music prefer thicker
picks to produce more controllable, delicate and great music.
Guitar players who play farthest genres, such as, black metal,
death metal or punk rock prefer soft guitar picks. Many Jazz
guitar players prefer to use very thick guitar picks, since they
like heavy gauge strings. However, there is no written rule on
selecting a particular pick. It is purely based on personal
choice. Steel guitar picks are believed to be producing much
brighter sounds than that of plastic picks. However, steel picks
may damage the finish of the acoustic guitars.

Finding the Thickness of the Guitar Picks
Several of the manufacturers, including, Alicem Jim, Dunlop
and Teckpick, imprint the thickness of their picks thousands
or in mm on the pick itself. Popular guitar manufacturers like
Fender, Gibson, Ibanez and Peavey sometimes used cryptic
way of denoting the thickness of the picks.

Therefore, if you have the passion for guitar picks and want
a celebrity signature, it is better to opt for customized guitar
picks. You can claim you are a collector too.

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