I agree, I like bright bold colors for picks. Since you have a bunch of picks lying around anyways, I'd like to hear your take on how their material affects the performance of picks and what materials you like best. Is there an all-around best material or do you choose different materials for different situations? Thanks for the vid.
Thanks again for watching! Yeah, the color really is important, it may not matter to everyone, but that's one of the biggest reasons why started making my own picks. And that's a great question about material, it certainly does affect both sound and performance. Even if we exclude materials like metal, stone, felt, etc. and just limit it to the family of plastics, nylon is softer and produces a warmer, less chirpy sound. Ultex, which is very hard, produces a brighter sound. And there are plastics in between like celluloid and tortex. Each one will also wear out at different rates and in different ways, some will become smooth, some will chip or create grooves that the string will get stuck on. And there's good and bad to each material for each individual player/situation. For me, with the picks that I make myself, I really like Acrylic a lot so far. There's an endless amount of color options, it's relatively easy to work with, I've been testing them for about 6 months now and they don't seem to wear out at all, and they sound really good too. If this video performs well, I'll probably eventually make a video taking 1 thickness of pick and compare all the different plastics, see how that goes.
They are Jazz III 2.0, the update. Precise but with a fuller tone thanks to the extra 2 mm of length and width. I tried the Jazz III Tortex 1.5 in small and in XL, as well as the Ultex JIII 2.0, and they just sound too thin and thinny compared to their bigger brothers. The Flow is the perfect middle ground without being too big, imo of course. Problem is that the tips die way faster than the Ultex JIII 2.0 or even Tortex picks, sadly. Maybe non-yellow Ultem is softer and not as durable? Would make sense since many 2+mm picks are usually boutique material, while the 2+mm we currently have all die quickly (Stubby, Jazztone, Flow, Delrin 500, Gator Grip). Or I'm just too heavy handed. Alt picking always feels like a workout even though I can trem pick with my wrist instead of the whole arm thanks to my teacher
Excellent analysis, my friend, thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts! I definitely agree with you on pretty much everything you said. My personal opinion on the tip of the flow is that, due to the wider/rounder bevel to get to the tip, there's essentially less tip available than a jazz iii. So when you wear it down a bit, you're almost looking at like a jazz ii or even jazz i type tip, depending on the level of wear. And you certainly could be on to something with the non-yellow/non-natural material, as you'd imagine any sort of additive in the formula would affect it in some way. The yellow/natural ones do seem to wear differently in my experience, I've had them kind of like chip off, which is a problem itself. Have you ever considered making your own picks? I started doing that so I could have exactly what I want, at a lower cost. It's a lot of fun to make them as well! Thanks again for your comment, I love reading/talking about picks! Take care!
It's a pretty cool guitar, unfortunately the one I received had a lot if wiring and shielding issues that I had to fix, but for the price, I didn't mind. And you can't go wrong with the .88mm thickness, not too thin or thick. Do you use the flow shape or a different shape? Thanks for watching, I appreciate it, you take care as well!
The standard pick shape is definitely a timeless classic, sometimes I like a little sharper tip, though. Plus I'm just a pick nerd/addict, so any excuse to buy some new picks. Yeah, if you try the flow shape some time, let me know what you think!
I get that comment a lot and my response is always "#BlameRedDeadRedemption2". I used to stream video games a lot and when I did RDR2, my voice slowly turned into that throughout the playthrough and now that's just how I talk.
