Product Description

Why A Pick?

A guitar pick, or plectrum is used to pluck, or strum guitar strings; to improve sound, allow faster strumming, and reduce injury on fingers. You can just use your fingers, especially for picking, but a pick gives far more bite to notes, and hurts a lot less.

Playing with a pick (or plectrum) is especially useful when playing lots of notes fast. Rock and metal riffs and solos are usually played using a pick. ... Strumming chords on a steel string guitar tends to be richer with a pick, and you get a louder volume in general.

What are the benefits of using a guitar pick instead of finger picking?

Playing with a pick and playing with the fingers are two entirely different techniques. I don’t think it makes sense to compare them to each other as if there is some list of “pros-and-cons” and we are to choose the winner. It’s like comparing apples to oranges.

I will say that the pick is more suited to playing lead (single-note) passages on the steel string guitar. That’s because we need to do a lot of rapid alternation, and the pick focuses our point of contact with the guitar down to a tiny little point (whose angle we can manipulate), thus allowing for higher speeds.

On classical or flamenco guitar, this kind of speed can also be accomplished by plucking alternately with two fingers or more fingers on a single string. I have yet to see a player who does this at high speed on the steel string guitar.

Choosing the right thin pick is important

I'm showing 2 picks in the photo for a reason. They're not the same, and I'm not just talking about color. The blue one is a 0.46MM, and the white is a .1.5MM.

I greatly prefer the 0.46MM over the 1.5MM because it has slightly extra stiffness to it that makes it flap a little louder, and I like that.

Said in plain English, my strings "ping" more when using the 0.46MM. I'm not saying that will be your experience, but it is for me.

What I am saying is that if you decide to try out thin picks, you'll probably have to go through a few different types before finding the one you like.