Which is the best guitar pick to use – tips for the acoustic beginner

Which guitar pick is best for the acoustic guitar? Students don’t usually ask me this as they already have their own idea of a cool pick or plectrum. It seems like it’s bad enough struggling over new chord shapes with sore finger tips, being told what to do, without being able to choose your own plectrum. I mean give a newbee some dignity and rights.

And let’s face it, picks are falling over the counter of guitar shops, spilling into the hands of wannabee guitar heroes like the sweeties at a supermarket check out. Who could resist the Hendrix album cover plectrum case and the rest while browsing the delights of Amazon or E Bay.

There are shiny ones made of acetate, nylon, celluloid or deltrin, all of which I think of emotionally and aesthetically as more honestly categorized as “plastic”. They can be luminous, bright pink, tortoise shell or adorned with 3D holographic designed death-warrior skeleton head, Californian biker-gang, picks for mean-ass guitar players of all ages. You can even make them yourself. Anything goes.

You can see that there is a tendency to recommend the floppy variety for easy strumming, which maybe makes sense, but Rombo picks for Beginners is one example of a site which recommends something a little thicker because it’s the thickness which effects your playing not the design:

“Light guitar picks with less than 0,6 mm are considered beginners’ guitar picks. The reason for this, is that most beginner guitar players first learn strumming techniques, which can usually be played better with thinner plectrums. However, medium guitar picks with 0,75 mm thickness are the best place to start.”

https://rombopicks.com/blogs/insight-rombo/guitar-pick-for-beginners

Click on the link above for more great advice on choosing the right pick for yourself as a beginner.

For me though, having played gigs since the 1980s, and usually on an acoustic guitar because you don’t need an amp and can plug straight into a desk, and because it’s cheaper and you can play solo, I know exactly which pick I’ve settled on for the past decade at least.

The best pick to strum an acoustic is a one mm thick plectrum, designed with a rough surface for an easy grip and in a colour which doesn’t make you look ridiculous. Maybe that’s just me as a self-deprecating northern English man and you being you can choose whatever you like. Be as flamboyant as you must but that’s what I use and I’d swear by it. Not too floppy not too clumsy-thick.

I had no nerves as a teenager banging out chords and singing in a 1980s student goth band – let’s face it I never considered playing sober anyway. In the 90s though I found when I started up again for my first gig my legs shook and my voice warbled like Larry the Lamb with nerves.

Every time a string pinged off and snapped in a guitar thrusting, high energy chord I panicked. One time my fingertips were so sweaty with anxiety the plectrum simply slipped to the floor into the darkness of a moody lit stage, mid song. I was desperate with wrongly perceived embarrassment.

As years went by, no, decades, I realised you can learn to play perfectly without hearing yourself because your sound engineer has neglected to switch on the monitors and you know the songs. You know where your fingers are going to go on the fretboard under all circumstances. It’s a joyful, confident relief.

Floppy picks though lose connection for me and hard ones feel deeply insensitive for the emotion of soft or loud playing which is under your control. The grip on my Jim Dunlop picks allows me to keep that feeling of just holding the plectrum tightly enough so it doesn’t fall. It’s like a light glue on your fingertips and after a while it becomes second nature. I might drop a smooth one.

With an acoustic guitar of course you could just play fingerstyle and not use a plectrum at all. It’s a whole genre of acoustic music and style which deserves huge respect for its beauty and success in music and song.

The main thing with picks is – stop losing them – which is harder with a black pick I know. The other thing – don’t take other people’s picks. Bring your own. It’s your responsibility.