Carbon fiber.
As thin as 0.2 and wont break. Loudest snap noise ever.
Carbon fibre fretboard too?
1 Like
Great read thanks for posting! I have seen forum threads of players using the drop test on guitar picks so it is indeed a thing. I haven’t tried it yet. Re: damping, BlueChip picks are among the strongest chirpers which would suggest they have low damping, i.e. the opposite of rubber. The article suggests it is possible to engineer a material that’s stiff while still being compliant or having damping, if I’m reading that correctly. The Elastomer picks are maybe a stab at doing that.
1 Like
BlueChip picks are again a good test. They are hard and very slippery, and the material they are made from, Vespel, is sometimes used as bushings and bearings for that reason. They are among the strongest chirpers. So I don’t think it’s a rosin-style effect. It seems more like energy transfer via impact, and subsequent reflection of that energy once the string starts vibrating.
Where friction does appear to matter is high end treble harmonics. As an example, abraded edges on nylon and celluloid picks appear to excite them - that’s the other clip we put up yesterday. Your bow analogy is a great one for that example. Maybe we can add that to the abrasion chapter.
1 Like
- The pick hits the string, acting like a fret where one did a hammer-on, this makes the chirp
- The pick drags across the string (where abrasion might be heard)
- The string snaps off the bottom of the pick (creating the main sound)
So if the pick, as a “fret,” is soft, it will damp the chirp vibrations. Given the length from the impact to the bridge one can get the frequency of the chirp, and the question is how long such vibrations can be sustained before the “fret” absorbs them.
My guess is that one could ACTUALLY make a fret out of a portion of a guitar pick and then just pluck with fingers and listen to how the fret sounds, it seems that nylon will choke the sound very quickly. It might be worth trying…
I tried finding numbers, but there are a few variants of Vespel. I found 0.29 and 0.2?.
Those aren’t very low values compared to Teflon at 0.04 (and aluminium at just above 1 is as bad as it gets). In fact Vespel seems to be pretty normal plastic along this dimension.
I’m not ready to abandon this theory. Copper (or even iron and steel) should also be really chirpy, if anyone has such a pick lying around.
I don’t believe Blue Chip has said which Vespel they use, but DIY internet sleuths have determined by buying up a bunch of it that it’s Vespel SP-1:
http://diy-fever.com/misc/diy-vespel-picks/
Whatever the numbers say, if you do some edge picking with a heavier gauge BlueChip with a rounded edge, you tend to slide right off the string. The feel is slippery, much more so than a material like yellow unpolished Ultex, which has that grippy surface on it. But Ultex is also at the top end of the chirp list.
It could be that that there is some interaction here with the surface texture, and that smoothness plays some role in it. My initial assumption was that smooth materials would chirp more, not less, because of the uniformity of the surface promoting the energy transfer at impact. If Teflon really is as smooth in feel though then that may not be the case.
If you can think of more rough-surface grippy materials, like Ultex, that also chirp at lot, that would lean in favor of the hard rather than smooth hypothesis.
I agree with you. I actually use a CT-55 from Blue Chip as my main pick these days. Before that I actually preferred the Dunlop Ultex Sharp. As an interesting aside I think the reason I now prefer the CT-55 is that my worn Ultex has taken on the same slightly rounded tip and the exact same bezels after heavy use.
But saying that it ‘feels smooth’ isn’t very scientific. I don’t know what sort of difference there’d have to be between two picks’ friction coefficient for me to notice. If it is indeed SP-1 then that material comes in at 0.29, which is probably fairly normal for materials commonly used for guitar picks. In fact, I’m guessing most guitar picks fall in a VERY narrow range.
The interesting thing to me is that if we plot chirp as a function of friction coefficient we get an increasing slope, I think. What I really want is more data points, to see if that stays true. So far we only have a few data points along this curve. With increasing friction we so far have: teflon, nylon and then the Blue Chip which chirps the most. I’ve been trying to make suggestions of materials at the far end so we can get more data.
If you’d be willing to lubricate the tip of your pick I’d bet the chirp would decrease by a lot too 
Yeah, that’s the same that happens when playing with a slide.
Slides and tonebars have to be smooth because you move them against the string, and any roughness will generate scratching sounds.
I think smoothness does have an effect on pick chirp, but we have to change our model. In addition to striking the string and causing it to fret on the pick, we also have to include a bit of pick scrape. The pick doesn’t strike the string and stay there, it scrapes against the string before releasing (like @kgk said), which would cause a series of micro-chirps (like stick-slip behavior in seismology) along with some other noises.
With edge picking, you are scraping with tiny surface (like bowing a violin), which would cause increased volume and pitch clarity, compared to neutral picking, where you are scraping with a wider, flatter, and possible smoother surface, which would change the sonic characteristic of the scrape.
The thing with plastic materials is that people get mislead by trade names. To find correct material for any application requires finding the actual polymer(s) behind the trade name.
You can test this by searching for “PTFE” in WolframAlpha:
There are 483 trade names associated with PTFE. Broadly, they all share the characteristics of pure PTFE, but you are no longer in the dark about those trade names.
So what are the materials that pics are made of? There are quite a few. Here are some:
Delrin = polyoxymethylene = POM
Tortex = I believe the same as Delrin = POM
Nylon = polyamide = PA
Celluloid = biopolymer, not artificial plastic
Elastomer = general term for rubber-like plastics
Teflon = polytetrafluoroethylene = PTFE
So what is the relation to chirping? I am no material engineer, but my instinct told me to look at Young’s modulus. It seems that those with very small modulus have very little chirp.
The fact that PA has little chirp could mean that it is some impact modified version. PA is an astonishing material to withstand impact. Like you won’t believe. Piledriver impact pads are made from PA!
Duller sounding ones seem to be tougher, high impact materials. Hard and brittle ones are chirpy. Degree of crystallinity plays no immediately recognizable role.
Feel free to draw different conclusions:
2 Likes
So I should just press one pick down as a “fret” or “nut” (say just beyond the edge of the neck) and use a second pick or finger to pluck the string and listen. I only have one type of pick (2mm Flow), but it might be fun if somebody with a good collection gives it a try (say nylon vs. Ultem).
1 Like
My current favorite pick is the Dunlop Flow but I just started experimenting with the Dunlop Prime Tone picks as well. The DLPT picks come with a pre-beveled edge which imo kills the need to break the pick in. For me they honestly felt broken in and had very low chirp. They also have the same great grip as the DLFlow. I got them in two sizes as well, jazz iii size and jazz iii xl size. I find the smaller one easier to sweep with and economy picking is very easy on both. 
1 Like
That’s my entire problem with picking - edge picking is extremely comfortable for me. The pick feels like it’s gliding through the string. However the tone it produces, especially on the wound strings, is horrible!
I find that the Dunlop Ultex Jazz III 2.0 that im currently using has insane amount of chirp fresh out of the bag. Almost sounds like sound paper against the strings. Very hard stiff pick. But it stars getting smoother as it wears. The Ultex takes on a polished look. It still chirps somewhat but its less pronounced and annoying. I find that the sound gives a nice pronounced attack specially for high gain metal playing, really makes your dynamics pop out. There is no pick abrasion like you would get on a nylon pick. Really like this about Ultex.
What you’re describing as a sand paper sound doesn’t sound like chirp. Is this what you’re hearing?
A fresh pick has less of this on the smooth strings, and tons of it on the wound strings. Once it starts to develop the flat spot from abrasion, it’s the reverse. It has less of it on the wound strings and more of it on the smooth strings. Ultex definitely abrades, which is how the flat spot develops.
What I’m calling chirp is the high-pitched squeaky noise the pick makes on the strings:
Ultex definitely has it, and a 2.0mm Ultex will have a lot of it. A more massive pick of the same material seems to chirp more than a less massive one. I’m not sure if that really changes once the abrasion flat spot develops. It might! I’m sure there are some subtleties I haven’t picked up on the affect when you hear the chirp and when you don’t.
When the Ultex Jazz III 2,0 is fresh out of the bag it has a rough drag specially against the the treble strings. To me it feels like very fine sand paper. This feeling goes away after a few strokes. When I play live I usually take like 10 brand new of these picks and play a few chords with all of them to break them in quickly to take that sand paper feel away. Maybe it’s more of a feel thing. It goes away quickly. But yes, there is also chirp. But the picks almost polishes itself as it wears and becomes smoother, but not devoid of chirp. When I record with them I like to use the ones that have some wear on them because the initial tone of the fresh pick it very present. Yet, I find the pick so comfortable that I wish dunlop would make this 2.0 shape with the amber ultex.
I believe I read in this forum some described the tone of the pick with with word shrapnel. Which seems to describe that initial sand paper feel it has.
All other black ultex picks that I have tried don’t have this characteristic. Not even the 1.5 jazz Petrucci model which comes new with a polished tip. Or the black flow ultex 2.0 and 3.0 picks that chirp a lot but they don’t have that initial rough feel.
In this video this person doesn’t even want to include the Jazz Ultex 2,0 pick in her shootout because from the get go she feels its just to bright. She just leaves it out of the picks she compares.
Interesting thread.
I’m going to come home and record some of my picks and then compare them on their “chirpness”
1 Like
Ok. I recorded tremolo with 13 picks, though most of them are similar. I didn’t notice much difference. Or should I say there are differences but they are more like my playing inconsistency rather than picks per se.
I looked at waveforms. Seems like highest level of “chirp” was with Dunlop 1.5mm (green one, with crocodile, beveled edges) and chinese 1.2mm (standard fender shape). Lowest level of chirp was with Dunlop Jazz III (XL series, white, with a tortoise), Dunlop 2.0mm (black, with crocodile, beveled edges) and Dunlop Ultex Sharp 1.4mm (with sharp tip).
Sorry, I don’t remember picks names…
P.S. I lost one pick just before shooting ))
Awesome!
Whats your opinion on the Ultex Jazz III 2.0 Black?