The PICK thread

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.

3 Likes

Late-night JD-fuelled impulse buy:


1.14 mm, comfortable, good for strumming i hope !

10 Likes

Approved!!!

5 Likes

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!

6 Likes

I like Ultex .88s. Prefer 1.0 for Tortex though.

.60 is a guitar pick, way too thin for bass for me.

3 Likes

This is where I am too.

3 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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.

1 Like

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?

1 Like

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 :joy: Seriously, it’s a matter of habit and training.

It just takes time.
The other thing I find is I have issues deciding when to change from down to up in a tune to make it more easily playable.
Somewhere on here @chordsykat posted a really good picking practice exercise and now I cannot find it but hope she sees this and reposts it (it may even be above).

Those PrimeTone picks are my new favorites. I bought a pack of 1.5, and they are all I need.

This is a pretty long thread, and I’m not sure if it’s getting much activity still (I haven’t made it to the bottom to see when the latest post was before mine), but as a long time electric and acoustic guitarist (a flatpicking acoustic guitarist, to be specific) and mandolin player, I’ve got lots of experience and opinions re: picks. And, I am the rare person who doesn’t lose picks; I still have pretty much every pick I’ve ever owned, including the one I first learned on at age 15.

When I first picked up the bass a few months back, I used a pick and assumed that’s all I’d ever do. Finger plucking felt awkward, clumsy, slow… I thought I would never get the hang of it! Somehow though, I’ve gotten comfortable with it, and now (get this!) I tend to play with my fingers on almost every song except the very fastest ones. For those, I still use a flatpick because I can pick pretty much as fast as I would ever need or want; I just can’t do alternating fingers that quickly.

4 Likes

I got that tin, the first picks I ever bought

I don’t like the thickness, but I may appreciate it more for Lemmy style power chords.

May give them a go again sometime

Hell it’s worth buying just for the tim

2 Likes

Hah yeah :slight_smile: I haven’t lost a pick for weeks now :slight_smile: . I’m quite fond of the thickness myself, although I have yet to try them on anything other than Motorhead songs…

2 Likes