My favorite guitar pick is one I grabbed for free at a trade show booth. Had I known at the time, I probably would have kept walking…

When I started learning guitar a few years ago, I collected picks wherever I went: club shows, trade shows, guitar stores. At first I didn’t know how different they were, and once I did I wanted to try them all!

At some point early on I found myself using a pick I had grabbed at MacWorld from the RiffWorks booth, a white Dunlop-style pick that just felt right to me. I’ve used one now on nearly every one of my recordings. I got a couple of them that first day, and then made sure to visit that booth the following year at MacWorld to grab a few more. After that, they no longer had a booth there and since I had several picks in my possession I didn’t think about it any more. Till recently.

Realizing that they wouldn’t last forever, I went on a hunt for a similar pick. It’s right between the Dunlop Tortex yellow & green, and nothing I found felt like it. I even did a full-flight test of a series of different picks at my local music shop, Marin Music Center, with the assistance of the the owner, the ever-helpful Jesse Harms, but without finding one quite like it.

Turns out that though it feels like Tortex, it’s actually a similar plastic called Delrin, and though it’s .05 thicker than the yellow Dunlop it’s slightly more flexible. Nothing else will do for me at the moment, which is kind of a problem!

I decided to go back to the source and order a bag of them from Riffworks to last me as long as possible. Luckily they still had some in stock, so now I have what I hope is a lifetime supply! For the bass I use the green Dunlop Tortex or a nylon Fender Heavy but for my Black Betty nothing else will do!

Are you this picky about your picks?

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