Thomann sells some: https://www.thomann.de/intl/timber_tones_bone_tones_bo1_buffalo_bone.htm and https://www.thomann.de/intl/timber_tones_bone_tones_mixed_tin_of_four.htm among others.

I can't remember what I tried years ago but I can say that they weren't for me. Good for solid alternate picking but not so much for strumming.

 

Herco Flex 50 or light guage - pretty much the only pick I use now.

 

As long as my guitar technique was evolving across the time, I have changed many time my preferences about plectrums.
I have used : Gibson, Dunlop (tortex, carbon, grip, jazz,etc), Pickboy jazz ...
Never have finded the "definitive" one. I have sufering many injuries in my right arm and, as a consecuence, I´ve been forced to change also my technique. So I´ve been selecting the betther plectrum for me at that moment ... maybe tomorrow would chose a diferent one

I think the best thing you can do is to go to your favorite music store and buy a variety of plectrums acording to your preferences, and test them confortably in your home without any kind of pressure.
You can give as a gift the ones that you discard to your fans in your concerts ;-)

We all have diferent hands and technique : the one wich is good for one person, don´t have to be the best for another.

 

@Donut Nyamer.. These are your's if you want them, two buffalo horn picks approximately 1.15 mm. PM me if you do. They were made locally here in Switzerland and word on the street is that those two Buffalo are pissed off at me and are looking for me to return them with interest due. You'd be helping me out by taking them off my hands.

I also have a thick Dugan coconut shell pick that I have no use for if anyone wants to try it out.



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Last edited: Apr 22, 2021

My newest discovery: Dunlop Flow Picks 2.0mm

I like them a lot, they feel a little like Jazz III Ultex but they're normal sized.

 

Thanks so much for the offer but I will grab some myself next time I'm putting an order in. I'm still making my list so I can keep it all on the same invoice. I'm just curious about different picks because I didn't really know so many people really preferred picks made from other materials before. Not beyond the basic plastics, anyways.

Coconut shell is a new one for me too, it looks very aesthetically pleasing. Knowing it was at some point housing middle class coconut milk that ended up in a good curry also does it for me in the weirdest way. Traditional tit milk is for babies, I agree man. I wouldn't pick my guitar with a piece of utter but I'd slap my bass with my dick & sell it's samples. Nobody can tell the difference.

To be completely honest I'm deathly afraid of metal picks which it looks like you linked after talking about bone picks which are new to me altogether. I'm very interested in finding out what other materials could sound like against my strings.

With the way I play I would probably snap a string immediately if I used a metal pick of any kind on my guitar. If I could go to a thinner size on my dunlop nylon maxgrips, I would. Only for guitar though.

On bass I want to play with the god damn cinder block I rest my foot on when I practice & jam. Because no bASS picc end up thicc enough for me, ma'am.

 

@Lois Lane It's metal as fuck to be picking your guitar with a piece of bone though.

"Where did you get that pick from man?" your friend asks. "I broke the tip off a decomposed buffalo's horned skull deep in the Blair Witch woods last week, man" you reply.

Then you ask "Where did you cut that sad middle school ID droplet from?" as his face turns into a fruit punch airhead commercial in mere seconds.

 

I heard Sonic Youth guitarist would take like a 5" X 3" piece of aluminum foil and wrap it around at the Top of the neck of his guitar

actually double size you have to wrap it around so you see a rectangle on the front. and the Light surface contact with the aluminum foil on the strings tweaks the sound

he also used power drills and scraped it up and Down the guitar

 

Daevid Allen (RIP) of Gong used to use an Allen Wrench (pun perhaps intended) instead of a slide for glissandos, Steve Hillage of the same used to use a vibrator for, mh, picking.

I'm no slide guitarist but a beer can on a guitar on your lap with a volume pedal makes for a gnarly faux pedal steel. Surprisingly it makes a different sound depending on if the can is empty or full. Wouldn't recommend half-finished one here.

Also a fun way to get strings vibrating is to use those small plastic soda bottles to hit the strings in rhythm. I guess any soft-enough thingy works here. Something that gives just enough bounce so you get these weird tremolos going, then move the hitting location forwards and backwards for a low-rent flanger type sound.

 

Good question! The music shop I bought it in just had a small bin with handmade picks made out of different kinds of wood, bone and metal. I guess that they might have been made somewhere locally but I'm not sure. In northern Sweden you can find a lot of different stuff made out of reindeer and moose bones and antlers. Check places that still sell saddles made out of real bone, they might also have picks!

 

Also bone string pins for acoustic guitars is a thing. I use ebony on my three best acoustics but they all have bone nuts and saddles. The most difference that I noticed was on my Martin D-18 when it was just a few weeks in my hands three (?) years ago. It mellowed out the tone considerably to me, though doing the same on the D-15M and my sweet 1992 Roy Noble Cedar/Madagascar had less an effect.

 

No, not there. I was wandering around the fields outside of my village and found a cow to swipe some horn off to whittle down a few slices with my Dremel tool to fabricate myself a few picks when a bull came up to me and asked me what the fuck I was doing talking up "his bitch". I told him to mind his own business, but he wasn't having any of that. The next I knew he was head down and pawing at the ground ready to charge my ass. I wasn't gonna wait for him to make his move, but when I reached behind to grab my Bowie knife I realized that my wife was using it clean the Elk that she had wrestled down that morning that was in the garden eating her sacred (to her anyway) snap peas and was at the moment preparing for dinner. That's when I took off towards the center of town, the freaky big bull now running behind me, and with each step getting closer and closer to skewering me. I saw the open door to the new museum, and entering, frantically looked for a place to hide to no avail in that big empty space. Before I knew it that bull farted mightily and came at me like a rocket, lifting me and him upwards as I slammed face first into the wall high above the floor. It hurt. When we landed he spit at me, kicked me once in the chest and told me that he had better never see me again. He trotted out of the door and took a big dump in the doorway before he turned left and back to his farm and "his bitch". I brushed myself off, and as I was getting up noticed about two inches off the tip of one of his horns laying there next to my right foot. I pocketed it, and after a nice long bath and some elk stew made those two picks which I offered you.

 

That's interesting, I've never heard of Gong before either.

LOL Definitely would not use a half finished can, too sticky. Too carby.

Oh shit like drum rolls on your strings. Crazy to learn about all the truly odd shit people do to make something uniquely theirs. Entertaining reply, thanks for chiming in!

When I read this at first I was like why would you want to put foil at the neck where I put a small block of styrofoam to keep that twang out of my recordings. Not just over the strings, but under them at the top of the neck where the strings split off and make their way to the tuning pegs. But the opposite is very interesting too.

I couldn't fully understand the middle part of your message.

I heard that's how the SAW franchise got started.

Thanks! I actually think I found some but it doesn't really specify what type of bone so idk if it's real lol Super cool they have so many different textures to experiment with. Which I'm going to be doing soon.

That's very cool, didn't think they had different pins either. I got a set recently with only plastic ones, same with the bridge. I'm guessing they probably have bone bridges and nuts too? Also Martin guitars are elite.

LOOOL DAMN MAN you picked those horn tips up? Because the pic your wife took here shows the tips going through your asshole then poke out of your head. You can't fool me when the evidence speaks for itself man! Those bone picks you have now had to have come from Amazon Prime.

 

Gong is an acquired taste, but to me their "Radio Gnome Trilogy" (Flying Teapot / Angel's Egg / You) is truly special. Try Angel's Egg if you fancy some properly wacked out silliness.

 

It wasn't my wife that took the photo as she was home cooking the elk for dinner. It was a Japanese tourist that caught that scene, and that's from her post on Instagram.

 

For me, pick sound is very important. I use only nylon, and I got an ivory (omg) for some classical stuff. Most other materials sound like plastic to me. Yuk

 

Heavy....

 

Take a peek at this pick

https://www.morningstarglassguitars.com/product-page/super-thick-glass-pick



oh and the guitar is pretty cool too

 

The instruments and the pick do look cool, in fact as cold as ice. I guess one might call them "Ice Picks". The guitars and bases must weigh a fucking ton, the plastic plexiglass variety do.

If you play a glass guitar
Don't even think
Of throwing stones
Lest one of them ricochets
And flies on back to home

 

or onto your guitar and shatter it