Picking advice that just occurred to me: you want higher tension strings. Playing with a pick sucks on flubby strings. To me anyway, 45-100 rounds on a 34" feel great, and a .105 makes the E string feel a little better to pick (though it will buzz more). Picking a flubby B string is much less fun (despite sounding awesome) which is probably why I always liked .135’s more than .130s.
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Interesting. Maybe this is why it seams easier to pick on my 2-string slide bass with super high tension.
Now working on up/down as all the Morphine tunes can’t be played without up/down. Too fast at times.
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a .125 on my 35" Schecters is glorious to pick. A .130 is nice, too. All my 5-strings are tuned up half a step, now, and that extra bit of tension is nice.
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Yeah I bet 35” really makes a huge difference.
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Recently, I was trying a riff that is all open string on the E, and I was having a hard time to get it up to speed, because what I found was that that E string seems to be all over the place and I couldn’t hit it consistently, because it wasn’t consistent in the same spot. So what you are saying about higher tension strings for picking makes a lot of sense to me, this should help quite a bit for those kind of Riffs (in my case: White Zombie - Thunderkiss '65).
But what I find interesting: Billy Corgan once said that tuning down a half step feels great for picking. Could it be that it is the other way around for guitar, that “those people” want less string tension?
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as I’m very used to playing with a pick (from my guitar years) I can pick with low tension strings without much problem. as an example, I played my last cover with a low C on a 100 string (40/100 on Greenie) ; two full steps below the standard tuning. but that’s kinda extreme.
when I play a really fast line and I really need that “rebound” between two attacks, I prefer more tension. What I do then is than I place my attack closer to the bridge, which effectively increases the force you have to put locally on the string to make it vibrate.
also the pick choice can be more important for fast lines. I choose mostly a 1.14 Ultex in this context , wherhas I can choose one between 0.88-1.00-1.14-1.40 otherwise, depending on how I want my attack to sound.
but yeah, a bit more tension can really help, especially for those who are new to pick, I think, when the attack is not 100% consistent.
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I play mostly fingers, but when I pick, these are the ones.
And not just cuz the color, I like thin picks
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I recently discovered that Dunlop makes a 4.2mm pick… at about $6 USD each i cannot afford to lose one of those 
V-Picks has the “Insanity” 11.85mm thick pick that costs about $40 
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Holy hell
That’s only like 2.5 - 3mm string clearance on some basses
You would need a fat ass neck with 18-19mm string space to even consider it
Even then it seems like a novelty item.
But at $40 ea,…
I will stick with a pet rock. 
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I have settled on the large triangle .6mm tortex picks. I like the larger picks because it gives me enough real estate to grab onto so I don’t need to “squeeze” the pick to keep it in place when playing fast.
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Approved!!!
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I recently changed to the Tortex Green .88s.
I found the .60s were bending too much when trying to alternate fast eighth notes. I tried a 1.0 but it just felt too chunky. The .88s seem like a seem spot to me!
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I like Ultex .88s. Prefer 1.0 for Tortex though.
.60 is a guitar pick, way too thin for bass for me.
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This is where I am too.
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I do use a 0.60 Ultex as my guitar pick, my current favorite actually.
.88-1.14 Tortex and Ultex is where it’s at for bass picks for me. Prefer 1.0 in both but .88 works fine.
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Yeah, I can go from .88 to 1.40 Ultex, my favorite being usually the 1.14 . I think that 1.0 may be a good starting point for those who have no idea.
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I actually use Dragon Heart picks when I play with a pick. The different edges allow me to do some theatrics that are hard to do otherwise. Like sweep picking really fast. Granted, it is a limited technique on bass but I used these when I played guitar and got used to them. Really good pick.
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I’ve been working on alternating picking for a while now, and I can do the occasional upstrokes here and there while playing “normal” bass lines, but when it comes to chugging, everything falls apart. It sounds horribly uneven, and I outright miss like 20% of the notes. I know, practice more, but the point is - isn’t chugging supposed to be the easy part? That was my experience with alternating plucking at least - chugging was nice and easy, and jumping strings was more difficult. Exact opposite of what I’m going through with alternating picking now.
Did anyone else have a similar experience with this, or am I just being untalented again?
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I think that at some point it’s just something not very natural for someone who used to play with bare fingers. It’s a different motion kinematics and it requires practice to make it work.
My advice would be to find a very simple and relatively slow (but not too slow : just the speed that seems the more natural to you) chugging line that you could play. The line itself will be easy to play but then you could focus on the consistency of your attacks, both up and down.
Don’t know if “untalent” is a thing already Seriously, it’s a matter of habit and training.