I’m going to pretend you said “Donut City” for maximum 80s nerd points.
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Loving all these investigations. Great work!
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Loving the pick data collection. Science! Where will it end? Electron microscopy? I wouldn’t put it past this community to come up with some evidence that way. 
That’s what you get when you have a guitar but you can’t play well and you’re too lazy to practice )) Just pretend you’re doing science!!
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Hi @ASTN.
I would suppose that the chirp pitch has to exist to some degree, regardless of the pick material or pickup setting. How perceptible the chirp is would certainly depend on those factors, and probably other factors too.
Some players have told me explicitly that they enjoy the chirp. Others don’t seem to notice it at all.
Cool break down of the chirp ! My belief is that pick material adds to character (harmonic resonance) of the chirp and the string vibration. The gauge, added with the type of strike and or dampening of flesh also contributes to this. I can take a crappy acoustic, select the right pick, determine whether pick gauge should play lighter or harder, and I can make the guitar sound more pronounced in where it was lacking. I think that is what Eddie Van Halen always made blanket statements, like it is all in the hands…yeah and the pick!
Oddly, light strings arguably have better tone in higher gain tones where heavy gauge typically sounds better on light overdrive as in SRV - but that is a whole other can of worms. In my view, the more the solid state gain or excessive 12ax7 pre amp gain or pedal drive/distortion or hotter pickups to active pickups… the less the impact of your manual control has on wood resonance of the guitar and other characteristics. A pick chirp at 8K post treatment, with a certain blend of mics and combo of room and speakers, with SSL, 1176 and other style comp/limiters may be exactly what sound amazing in the context of a mix of a particular song, but sound not so great alone. These studio tools, shape the character of the sound, of what’s already there… they can do no more. I believe through the sum of its parts, including pick material and great playing, you can impact the character of the chirp and overall tonal character to a degree, thus helping make that 8kHz pick chirp less brittle when Chris Lorde D’Alge puts your guitar tracks through his preset, CLA filtered sound - nothing against CLA! haha
Damn @ASTN, you are really smart guy to investigate all this stuff. I have never heard of anyone thinking about or doing this before. This is really cool and interesting even to me as a layman.
@aliendough thank you for your kind words! You know, I just have a good example to follow. I think we all know that guy with analytical mind and incredible guitar skills, who created this forum ))
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Strings are under tension and have elasticity, when you push down the string it pulls against your pick angle by increasing the stress on your fingers to a greater level depending on the distance of displacement and the status quo would change.
The pick material and the strings both have low grip properties to easily slide over each other depending on which element gives way first.
If you pick in a decisive action then the string would be shocked into waves, the string length will be effected through rippling and the splash back would knock on the string on return. The lowest note of low E is 82Hz of kickback speed.
I like the animations but the materialistic properties and conditions aren’t accounted for and I would only see the animations being accurate on a floating bridge playing at >80 notes per second with a metal robotic arm and pick
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Animations were a demonstration of different conceptions, not of a physical models. And for now, at least in my experiments, I see that these conseptions are correlated with real world. I gladly would see your thoughts on this topic. More opinions - more fun!
What a cool thread. I was struggling with just this “chirp” using pickboy agate stone picks.
I love the picks and the tone but that chirp was a bit much on the high E string, was more of a clang with YJM style single string licks under high gain!
In the end gave up and went back to Jazz III XLs.
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Great effort in this post.
I think the hand is far more important than the pick.
Some serious analysis on pick grip, hand construction and joint movements in fingers is called for.
I used to use thin picks when holding evh style, that style is hard to do fine movements while maintaining solid grip. Now I hold the pick with hooked index and thumb, I have a far more solid grip and can keep that solid grip in most angles allowing more controlled movements with stiff picks.
On the topic of picks…
I have used Dunlop 1.5mm picks for over 30 years: does anyone else use these (or thicker)?
I always strived for ZERO pick snap and more or less brush the pick against the string for pizzicato runs. Is this something that results in a speed limit - not that I want to play 164th note runs. Just better control.
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