Do you guys use a closed fist or open right hand?
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Pretty closed I think!
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I played for over 20 years with my pinkie and ring fingers planted. Then in 2012 I made a conscious effort to play with a floating lose fist. It took a few months to get comfortable with it, but it helped me play better in the end. It turns out those fingers were just getting in the way!
But really, do whateverâs comfortable for you. Thereâs so many amazing players with wildly different techniques that thereâs no ârightâ or correct" way. Experiment and see what feels best!
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I basically cannot play at all if I close my fingers, all control of pick angle, depth, attack just goes out the window.
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Mostly closed with the pinky anchored. Having an open hand kinda like Troy or Teemu Mäntysaari also feels comfortable for me, so I sometimes switch to that too 
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I can do both (also with anchored/not anchored variations), and I find different hand setups more comfortable for different things!
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Open because I canât understand the point of introducing extra tension into the picking hand by curling my fingers in. If I do that and continue playing they just end up going back to the open position.
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I have always played open. Light contact with picking hand 3rd and 4th fingers on the body (or the treble strings, if Iâve picking the lower âwoundâ strings). It helps me control pick depth with the former, string dampening with the latter.
Lately though, Iâve been working on elbow mechanic after a technique critique by Troy recommended I go all in with elbow. Iâve noticed Rustly Cooley has a closed hand. Thatâs obviously not the secret sauce, but I figure it couldnât hurt to experiment. It initially feels weird to me and like @guitarenthusiast said, I find when I do this, if I look down at my hand after a minute or 2, I see it has opened itself back up 
Oh yeah, then thereâs Shawn Lane I guess he never looked like he was making a fist or anything, but Iâd consider his hand more closed than open.
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I think you have to factor in what neutral position someoneâs fingers go to at rest. Could be because of the excessive amount of grip training that I do, but my fingers at rest already point back to my wrist.
Same here. When my hand is completely relaxed, the fingers are curved in a lose fist. For me, it seems to take more active muscles to play with an open hand than with a closed.
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Those of you who play with an open hand and are playing a Strat - do you find that the volume knob is a bother?
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I âdeletedâ it. Went to a 3-way switch with each humbucker having itâs own volume; no tone knob.
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I got Haar to make me one with only 2 knobs
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Loosely closed for me, so the fingers can drop down and hybrid pick at any time. I donât anchor either, as I started on acoustic guitar, and anchoring dampened the top from vibrating. Now I need those âanchoring fingersâ for the hybrid picking.
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I play finger style and hybrid pick as well, so it varies depending on what Iâm playing.
I have been an open player, with my pinky planted on the pick guard as a fulcrum. Iâve been trying to move to a closed fist, planting only on the bridge with the side of my hand. Iâve found that my previous style, I never bumped into the volume or the whammy bar, but with a closed fist, when Iâm playing on the b or high e, I run into both with the side of my hand and I canât really do it.
Couple things. One, try not to think of this as a super black and white choice between âopenâ and âfistâ. Most players who use a curled finger orientation donât really clamp down into a true fist, itâs more of a curl, and there a degrees of it, even in the same playerâs technique. For example, here are two versions of Andy Wood:
Second, what you choose to do here is going to be influenced by your choice of arm position and picking motion. If youâre using a wrist motion approach like Andyâs, you are likely to end up with some version of his form because the wrist is bent upward into extension. Itâs slight, but itâs there. This is why the fingers donât hit the strings or controls.
By contrast look at how different the form looks for forearm-wrist motion:
The wrist is no longer bent upwards into extension, but slightly flexed - i.e. like youâre holding a baby. The arm is more supinated, meaning the pinky side of the hand is turned more so it rests on the bridge. If you tried this arm and hand orientation with Andyâs form, the fingers would hit the strings or controls. Leaving them out like this takes them out of the way. They now rest lightly against the body. The motion no longer works by pivoting at the wrist joint, because it really canât â at least not the way Andyâs does. So the motion is a combination of the wrist moving and the arm turning a little.
So itâs just not just a choice of what to do with your fingers, itâs what to do with your entire technique. All the parts need to fit together and some of these elements are not as optional as you might think.
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I would like to ask this: Doesnât the orientation of the wrist on the axis of its flexion/extension automatically affect how open or closed the hand at rest will be?
Flexing the wrist will in turn produce additional tension on the extensors of the fingers and therefore âopenâ the hand and straighten the fingers if you donât actively work against it. Extending the wrist does the opposite.
So, in turn an extended wrist like in andy woods setup would automatically produce more âcurled fingersâ, while you would see less curled fingers in a more flexed wrist setup like steve morse, yngwie, etc.
I guess my question is, doesnât this kind of sort it itself out, depending on the wrist setup you choose?
(With individual variations, depending on ones flexibility etc.)
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Not that Iâm aware of. I mean, you can test this yourself. Just flex-extend your hand in the air. My fingers donât experience any tension or change their orientation when I do that.
Also, understand that Andyâs motion still uses the extensors and flexors. His motion is not pure deviation, it moves along a diagonal somewhere in between deviation and flextension. And even a pure deviation motion actually uses some of the flexors/extensors. Theyâre not totally slack.
So basically I think whether the fingers are open or closed is simply whether you want them to be.
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