ACOUSTIC POLL: pick, fingers, nails, fingerpicks.

ronnyb

I find it difficult to alternate between picking and strumming in the same song. As an example the Paul Simon song 'Homeward bound' is mainly fingerpicked apart from the chorus where he sings "home where my thoughts escaping etc" with 3 chord changes. I play this by pinching 2 strings at a time on the d g and b strings.

CHRISB50

Fingerstyle, nail and flesh.

I taper my nails from shorter on the bass side, to longer on the treble side. It looks pretty horrendous but produces the best sound for me. You can angle your fingers to get more or less nail, which in turn gives more room to vary the tone you produce. 

I saw a video ages ago where Michael Watts (who posts here from time to time) explained it. It's not on his channel anymore but this one is quite similar.



I found polishing them as he suggests also made a huge difference.

artiebear

Dunlop medium thumbpick and acrylic nails. ( I only use a conventional pick on acoustic for the odd recorded track these days, never because I really want to )

TheBigDipper

Finger style when the music requires it. Nails if I have them, flesh if I don't. Classical right hand, so muting the bridge requires a change to "side on, thumbpick-style" angles. 

Strumming with a thin flatpick.

Hybrid picking with a thick flatpick and ima fingers.

Never use a thumbpick. 

Stuckfast

Fingerstyle with a thumbpick (Fred Kelly Bumblebee are my favourites).

Mellish

Picks, either Dunlop Tortex, Ultex or Wegen. 

Mostly I favour light or medium gauge  

bertie

oh right, yeah forgot  -  thumbpick

Dunlop or EB "tortoiseshell"  -  I file the "blade" down to a symmetrical point - just find it better, not explanation just do
If I find em a bit tight, I drop em in hot water for a few seconds,  get em a bit malleable and "fit"  

stufisher

About a 50/50 split between flat picking and fingerpicking.

Preferred pick is a Jim Dunlop (0.88mm, grey dimpled one) but recently been using a range of smooth, smaller, thinner ones acquired as freebies.

Fingerpicking typically with flesh of thumb and nails of fingers or with a pick and fingernails, depending on style of music.

Mellish

@bertie ; - try the Fred Kelly Speedpick. They don't break and a nice fit on the thumb  

bertie

Mellish said:

@bertie ; - try the Fred Kelly Speedpick. They don't break and a nice fit on the thumb  

now that's a weird looking thing.................    I'll order one up


I was "worried" you were recommending those "pick/thumbpick" hybrid things  - bloody awful


EDIT

HOW MUCH ??    

ah there's 8 in a pack........................ somebody must to smaller packs 

Shadow

Almost exclusively fingerstyle with flesh and nails, sometimes with a thumbpick. Some hybrid picking with a medium Hawk.

Mellish

@bertie ; - I know exactly the ones you mean

The Speedpick comes in yellow, orange, white, green depending on stiffness. White is good  

stickyfiddle

Fleshy fingerpicking or Fender heavy tortoiseshell or occasionally dunlop yellow tortex. 

bertie

Mellish said:

@bertie ; - I know exactly the ones you mean

The Speedpick comes in yellow, orange, white, green depending on stiffness. White is good  

ooh not seen the green,   there's a 3 pack of yellow orange and white - for £3 = £1.50 shipping,  I'll drop one of those

earwighoney

I largely play fingerstyle and keep my thumb nail a few mm's long, fingernails a little shorter.

Occasionally, I will get out the fingerpicks if I am in a John Fahey mood.  I use Dunlop brass fingerpicks (the 0.013 ones if my memory serves me right), and I tried about 10 different thumb picks over the years and used a Herco Blue for years before settling on the brass Geipel, which costs over a £1 at Thomann which is one is one of the best sounding ones to my ears.

ICBM

Fingers 99% of the time, mostly nails but a bit of the side of my thumb as well. Flatpick 1% of the time - I can't get on with fingerpicks at all.

DartmoorHedgehog

I use nails for picking and strumming.  I think I'm a bit weird in that I do the same for electric guitar as well, even for heavier rock/punk stuff - I just don't like using a pick (or frankly I do a lot of swapping between finger picking and strumming, and could never be arsed to learn a pick palming technique).  I've got quite strong thick nails anyway, but do paint superglue on the first two nails otherwise they do wear quite a bit with heavy strumming.  If I break a nail off I'll stick a false nail on until it grows back long enough (about two weeks).

merlin

I hybrid pick using my flesh.  And I just got hold of a Blue Chip BC Jazz 40. Prior to that it was a Dunlop max-grip 1.14

sev112

Finger style pads mostly, plectrum for heavy strumming, what bits of fingernails I have for hybrid

once in a while use a thumb pick, and strum upwards with it

DavidR

Finger picks always. Dunlop .018 steel picks on i and m. One of 2 plastic thumbpicks  - soft (Jim Dunlop Red Delrin) or hard (Golden Gate Perloid GP6).

Two steel/plastic thumbpick combo unchanged since 1974 and have always used Dunlop .018's as the steel fingerpicks. Never been able to use a plectrum, which is, frankly, weird.

Heroes were of the Rev Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller ilk, which perhaps explains my extremely limited style.