Hi Everyone,

Help me out with your experience please. I'm playing fingerstyle on a Collings OM2HSB. Mostly in the style of Mississippi John Hurt. I love his playing. I use a plastic John Pearse thumbpick. When playing wih bare fingers / nails, sometimes the tone is good, and sometimes lacking in volume and in my opinion lacking in tone. So I tried an experiment; I got some National .13 guage fingerpicks to try. The tone is exceptional...clean and clear with equal volume to the thumbpick. However, they do feel more akward than bare fingers. Do any of you use fingerpicks? What type? Or do you only use bare fingers and just try to improve on technique?

Thanks - Howard

My nails hold up pretty well so I don't use fingerpicks. I have used Alaska piks in the past which take a little getting use to but I think they are a nice option if you want to use finger picks.

Jim

http://www.alaskapik.com/

Howard,

I don't use finger or thumbpicks anymore, but I have nothing against them - they're used by some my all time favorites, like Gary Davis. Fingerpicks definitely produce more volume, a brighter sound, and they produce the same sound day in and day out, regardless of the condition of your nails. With a thumbpick, you get a crisper bass.

There's no question that you can play loud without fingerpicks, so I would assume that working on your technique would eventually solve the problem. If you go to Youtube and search Big Bill Broonzy, you'll see & hear how loud you can play without any picks. John Hurt is there too, if you haven't checked out his videos. The thumbwork of these two guys is somewhere between a pick and a strum, which explains how they get so much volume from their bare fingers.

The decision depends on what sound and feel you prefer. If you decide to play pickless, you can try some things. Experiment with changing your angle of attack, experiment with planting (or not planting) your fingers on the top, or try to play a little more aggressively. Experiment with the length, shape or surface of the nail (more nail doesn't necessarily mean louder - long nails might inhibit your attack for fear of busting your nail; also, I need to sand the ends of my nails with the finest grade sandpaper). If it were me, I would play just one note at a time, until I got the sound, tone, and volume I wanted. Then I would try and figure out how I got that tone, and slowly pick up speed.

The sound is there, you just have to find a way to get it out of the guitar!

I think it may depend on the tone you want to produce and the style of music. I have a friend who plays aggressive, finger-style blues and is actually striving for that "nasty" sound as he refers to it---You KNOW he's wearing finger picks, solid National metal on the fingers and one of those big white plastic National thumbpicks. You hear that metal against metal scraping---but oddly, it works for him and his style.

When I was playing out, back in the day, the PAs usually weren't that good and finger picks helped with volume and clarity. They let me create a bit more of a driving style that better suited a live performance. But I was always switching off between them and flatpicks and it was a bit of a pain.

For the longest time I've used bare thumb finger nails, but not obviously long like a classical guitarist's. They were convenient and gave just enough sound clarity over flesh. Nice and quiet when recording. But long enough to be a pain when woodworking and they'd chip, break, etc. Just like a bad haircut, that was only temporary and they would grow out, but still threw you off your game.

Recently, I've gravitated back to a thumb pick and ProPik FingerTones. I made my own thumbpick from a piece of TS recycled from an antique business card case. Not as difficult as you might think--but too much to go into here. The tone is pure and clean. It drops just below the edge of my thumb and is fairly narrow, so I'm not digging in deep at all. The ProPiks are the ones with the center cut out. This allows the flesh of your fingertip to make contact with the string and that makes all the difference when it comes to feel. I snug these up close, bending the ProPiks to follow the contour of my fingertip. There is hardly any pick at all extending beyond the end of my finger. I only use the index and middle finger.

AS opposed to my friend, I am trying for clarity and tone---I don't want to hear any pick noise on the string if I can help it. I go to the extra trouble of filing, polishing and buffing the edges of the ProPiks. This is a lot of trouble, but pick noise all but goes away and the pick just slides against the strings with no effort.

Going from fingernail to picks requires no small adjustment, but stick with it. It will sound awful at first and feel worse, but before you know it you'll be able to pick cleanly with great clarity of tone. These work for me.

Here's a link to a a website showing these picks:

ProPik FingerTone

'Geek

I play mostly bare-fingers at home, and on some tunes live. I always seem to lack power and volume though if I'm playing with a band or even just with a fiddler or bass player. For band use, I use a hybrid flat pick and fingers (a Telecaster technique)to gain power and clarity. I really want to eventually use just bare fingers. I really don't like thumbpicks and fingerpicks as they begin to hurt if I play for more than fifteen minutes.

I am learning to finger pick. I can hit the notes easier with my fingers but get a duller sound. I am working with both thumb and finger picks (2 fingers). I much prefer the sound with the picks and am still experimenting with different finger and thumb picks.
None of hte picks are as comfortable as I'd like and few have the surface that I use to hit the strings exactly where I want it. If I were good at metal work, I'd make my own but that's not going to happen.

+1 on the finger tone piks. I am trying to get that Townes Van Zandt sound down and he used finger picks, and I have had pretty good luck with the finger tones. I am a flat picker mostly, but am locking into the finger picking thing, as some songs just require it. Good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by juhy789:
My nails hold up pretty well so I don't use fingerpicks. I have used Alaska piks in the past which take a little getting use to but I think they are a nice option if you want to use finger picks.

Jim

http://www.alaskapik.com/

Howard,
I'm the same as Jim - filed nails on the fingers except when one breaks (fairly rare), then I use Alaska Piks. However, I most always use a thumbpick (Fred Kelley medium).

A couple of tips if you decide to try the Alaska Pics:
Most people file the plastic pics down a lot to get them to "nail" lenght so you can get both flesh and pic in the attack. The plastic pics sound much like natural nails and are what most people use. They are my favorite to use when a nail breaks. I can even just use one Alaska and the remainder natural nails.

However, METAL Alaska Pics are also available. They take some time to file and shape to get them just right for your per own personal needs (again, usually filed much shorter than when new). These, like the plastic pics, fit under the natural nail to hold them in place. They never wear out and stay on the fingers better than most other metal pics which can fly off. They also allow full contact of the flesh on the string before the brass pic strikes the string. So control is great. Because the angle of attack is the same as the natural nail you can play really loud with very little effort if wanted. I think they are the BEST METAL PIC choice - IMHO, even though I am not a huge metal pic fan.

Let me equivocate completely and say, all of the above. Personally, I have no natural nail option, since my fingers are tipped with Saran Wrap. Friends of mine have had nails they could use as makeshift screwdrivers. So, I got used to a thumbpick and fingerpicks (three). First, I used the usual plastic thumbpick and metal on the fingers. I found a disparity in tone, and a metallic edge to the sound that's good for some raw things- the Reverend Davis for example, who once gave me an impromptu lesson, but that's a story for another thread. so, I switched to plastic. You have to find a shop with several sizes and swap around for a few minutes until you find some your fingers like. they'll feel like playing with shackles at the start. I wore mine around the house for a couple weeks when I first started. But the sound is much more like that of real fingernails. For most applications, more volume, more control, better dynamics. But, then the exceptions: there are some things- say, Brazilian music as a starter- that just sound better with flesh to string, and you have the freedom of having no equipment- your hands and the guitar. I play that way maybe half the time. It's worth learning both ways. If God gave you gnarly nails, more power to you, but they still crack and tear at the most inopportune times. I"ve had the same set of fingerpicks for 15 years. For hardcore styles, like Delta blues, it's hard to beat that thumping thumb and your raw meat just beatin' those strings. Check son house on youtube. no picks, no excuses, just the Gospel truth straight outa his right hand. Good luck. tom