yeah that’s a pretty common problem. but music is art, and art does not work so well with hard rules 
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As a complete beginner I have a pick related question. Should I try to learn everything at the moment both with and without using a pick, or should I just ignore using a pick till I have some proficiency?
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in my opinion @Mark_UK , you should not add unneeded difficulty to your learning process. and it’s hard to learn two things at the same time.
I’d say that, unless you know you want to play with a pick (because for example the musical styles you want to play require the pick attack and agressive tone), you should learn first to play as a “normal” bassist, which means alternating bare fingers. you could always learn to play with a pick later
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Thanks for the advice @terb. I will follow what you suggest.
Once you have been learning for a long time just playing with fingers, is the transition to pick hard?
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I don’t know, as I’ve been a guitar player (and a pick player) even before I started to play bass !
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I’ll go along with what @terb says, @Mark_UK . . . 
Learning to play with your fingers first gives you a little better grounding, I think. As you progress through the course, you could try using a pick here and there to see how it affects your style and tone. Everyone is different, and there are no hard or fast rules on this. 
Cheers, Joe
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Plus 1
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Thanks @PamPurrs, seems general agreement on this. I’m glad as I was thinking I would have double the work learning if the view was different.
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… also I’d like to say that for now I’m playing with alternating bare fingers. all my last covers since the Dope one (April, 6) are all played without a pick. which means I never used a pick one in more than one month, which is probably a personal record.
I love the pick attack, feel and overall tone, but playing with alternating fingers makes me play in a different way, and even brings a very different inspiration when I’m composing bass lines. For example, alternating fingers work way better for me when I play dark country, where I need/want a “jumping” attack more than an agressive one.
what I’m trying to say is that playing mostly with a pick don’t mean that alternating fingers become less interesting. I like to be able to play with different plucking techniques, it’s a great way of expanding my expression range with the instrument. Of course the same logic works in the other way : if you play mostly with alternating fingers, it would be on error to neglect the pick, in my opinion.
morning philosophy 
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Interesting topic… I enjoy both styles as many have discussed depending on song genre, tempo, etc.
However, I have discovered a related aspect. When plucking I’ve discovered that my body can be more active, move around to the beat, and “feel” the music as I’m playing. But on songs where I’m picking, if I start moving more, I end up making more mistakes. I’m guessing this is because when using finger style, my hand and fingers can stay in contact more with the strings, but when using a pick, that contact is limited- so its much easier to play the wrong string or to not hit a string cleanly. With that being said, I do play more songs with a pick and love the sound- I probably just need more experience if I want to eventually jump around like a rock star!
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im a guitar player but playing lamb of god type riffs on bass are still some times kind of difficult I was wondering the thickness of the picks your using and if you have used any made out of picks that aren’t nylon and I have tried some stone and titanium and some others from timbre tones but this may be answered in this threat already and if it is im about to read it all right now so I apologize for asking if it is
I don’t like round wounds either but I to am struggling getting Harris technique but with a pick it is nothing but I feel like im cheating when I use one
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I have come to learn that there are some songs that people who play with fingers that have string jumps and string skips that I sometimes have trouble reproducing with a pick but also haven’t been playing for that long so maybe just haven’t learned the best way but some stuff people play with fingers are hard to with a pick and some stuff to do with pick is hard to do with fingers for example hysteria by muse is pretty easy for me with a pick but hard for me to do with my fingers but I see other bass players do it all the time
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Getting the right picks is critical. I was having a bad time with a thin guitar pick; moving up to 0.88 - 1.0mm made all the difference.
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Hey @creepymcpeepers !
I don’t think the right answer is to give a particular pick width. in fact (and as a guitar player you must know that), it’s some kind of equation between the pick rigidity and the string tension (itself being an equation between the string gauge, the string length (scale) and the tuning).
what I feel is that I need the right tension to have a nice and comprehensive “rebound” when I hit a string. and when in doubt, if I need to play fast, I prefer more than less tension. I play mostly with a light gauge stringset (on Greenie) but when I need to play really fast, a heavier gauge works better. that’s the reason why I might very probably get a second Fender Precision, basically the same thing than Greenie but with a heavier gauge.
I use for years 1.14 Ultex picks , it’s a bit heavy. I have also 1.40 ones but it’s really too much. I think @howard is a bit light talking about .88 , as it seems a bit too flubby to me. but again we don’t have the same feel when we play so at some point it’s very personnal. not saying @howard is wrong, just that .88 won’t be enough for me.
but if you want to play fast, at some point you need to “know” where the string is at a given time, and it won’t work very well with a very flubby pick. also a flubby pick will bring a very clicky attack, which I love, but it’s not very compatible with very fast playing in my opinion.
I undestand but can’t agree much. Harris has his (wonderful) playing style but you’re not Steve Harris. you’re not a worth person, just not the same, and so you don’t have to choose the same technique about how you attack when you play bass …
playing with a pick is not wrong or cheating or anything, it’s even not easier than alternate plucking, it’s just something different. really, I like both. but what I don’t like is that playing with a pick could be considered as “less prestigious” or a thing for “fake bassist” or I don’t know what similar bullshit 
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I love the sound of the pick, and I’ve acquired a nice collection of great picks, but just can’t seem to get the speed and accuracy of string jumping with the pick that I can with my fingers.
@terb I don’t think there’s anything less prestigious or fake about playing with a pick, and in fact I admire those who are proficient with it.
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yeah the pick and the bare fingers give a very different feel. in fact, as you know I’m a mostly-pick-player but I don’t see myself playing only with a pick. bare fingers alternate plucking has become (after B2B) a really big part of my expression range with my instrument, and from my recent covers you might have seen I’m kind of alternating between pick and alternating plucking
in some situations I can’t really imagine playing without a pick (my last cover for example, where I really need that attack) and in some other situations I really need that organic warm intimate feel with bare fingers (like on this track).
might record a short video to illustrate what I was saying about the “rebound” with the pick because I’m not sure it was very clear. please ask if a video shot would help make the thing more understandable.
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No worries at all there - .88 is what I would say in the minimum viable to me. I much prefer 1.0mm-1.2mm Ultex myself.
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I tried different materials in the past. I really hate metal picks, it just does not sound right for me. about other materials … I’d say, why ? the classic plastic things work well … 
yeah @PamPurrs it’s a very different motion, indeed. much more natural with fingers. with a pick, the down/up technique is pretty hard to master. you probably have seen @creepymcpeepers and myself do that on our covers and it seemed to be really easy and natural … and yes, it is for a guitar player (like us two) but I can say that this technique takes a lot of time to become natural and efficient.
what can be really really hard (even more with a bass than with a guitar because everything is bigger), I believe, is playing in down/up with a pick and jumping from a string to the 3rd one, I mean from E to D or A to G. the motion is pretty weird. as an example, you can see that on my Dope cover when I play the octaves (it’s in Drop D so technically D to D and A to G) (when the lyrics say “you spin me round …”) :
requires some practice but you can do it if you invest some time in this technique 
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