Picks - Science Question

[billkilpatrick]

Tonewood is defined as having "… recognized and consistent acoustic qualities when used in the making of musical instruments." I take "acoustic qualities" to mean that sound passes through the wood with a lesser degree of interference from it. The new - to me - composite picks (Primetone, Wegen, Blue chip, etc.) also have acoustic properties: When dropped onto a hard surface they produce a delicate, ringing sound - not so with celluloid picks.

Are the acoustic qualities of these picks negated - deadened - by being held between the thumb and forefinger?

[Explorer]

Tonewood is defined as having "… recognized and consistent acoustic qualities when used in the making of musical instruments." I take "acoustic qualities" to mean that sound passes through the wood with a lesser degree of interference from it. The new - to me - composite picks (Primetone, Wegen, Blue chip, etc.) also have acoustic properties: When dropped onto a hard surface they produce a delicate, ringing sound - not so with celluloid picks.

Are the acoustic qualities of these picks negated - deadened - by being held between the thumb and forefinger?

The acoustic properties of pick material only come into play when the picks are producing noise, like when they clack against a string before the pluck.

The more important properties of a pick are the pick's flexibility/rigidity, and how quickly the pick returns to flat if it bends.

The more flexible a pick is, combined with the pick's ability to return and speed in returning to its original shape, the more energy is imparted to the string upon release from the pick in motion. That's why a thin, springy pick gets more higher harmonics, and why stiffer picks (including a coin) get more of the fundamental. A flexible carbon fiber pick, a genuine tortoiseshell pick, a Tortex pick and even a silver coin will have similar acoustic properties when dropped, but they will have very different effects on the strings when used to pick.

Even the same material can have different effects on the strings depending on the thickness (and thus flexibility) of picks.

The effect of the fingers on the "chime" of a pick's material has nothing to do with the sound of the strings.

[billkilpatrick]

"Chime" was exactly the word I was looking for - Grazie. Violinists credit bows with acoustic qualities - wondered if the same applied to these picks.

[HoGo]

I've made many dozens of picks from various materials for my own playing over last 20 years and some of the more succesfull designs became favorite picks of several bandmates or picking friends of me.
From my experience, at least 80% of outcome is in the design of the pick i.e. shape, thickness, bevel, polish. The material comes to play mostly either when pick is thin and bends during use (stiffness is important) or the pick is played hard (then wear resistance and toughness is important). ANy other property of pick material is secondary. The tone of pick on hard floor is just stiffness of the material and if pick is 1.5mm or thicker this is not so important.
Of course there is player and his style of playing and his grip and importantly his perspiration that affects which pick fits him best. And there is specific instrument that is going to be played....
I've shaped several different pick materials into my favorite shape (1.5mm thick triangle slightly smaller than the Bluechips) and celluloid, polyimide (BC) and polyetherimide (Primetone ultem?) or Bufallo horn sounds just the same, difference is in wear resistance and that some of the materials slide when wet others less.
The exact shape of point is vastly more important than material in thick picks.
But no two players will sound the same even on the same instrument and same pick.

The bows and violins are different matter as pick strikes the strings and gives just the initial impulse and shortly after that (think milliseconds) the tone stabilizes to natural frequencies of the instrument, while on violin the bow is in touch with string all the time and filters the input wave that puts the whole instrument into resonance.
The initial impulse on mandolins is important and recognizable, but it is dominated by right hand technique and pick is just small part of equation.

[Bertram Henze]

But no two players will sound the same even on the same instrument and same pick.

Nor will any two days sound the same on the same instrument, same pick and same player.

[sunburst]

Tonewood is defined as having "… recognized and consistent acoustic qualities when used in the making of musical instruments."...

Could you please reveal the source of that quote?

[billkilpatrick]

Could you please reveal the source of that quote?

Not sure if it was one word or two so I looked it up … http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Tonewood/en-en/

[sblock]

The mechanical properties of stiffness, thickness, shape, mass, and damping of a pick all matter for its performance as a plectrum. However, the pick itself is not resonating in the acoustic frequency range when it's being used to pluck strings. Yes, you can certainly hear it 'ring' if you drop it on a solid surface. But that ringing is not what's happening when it's being held in the hand and struck against strings, and it's not contributing to the sound of a mandolin in that fashion. Put another way, the contribution of the pick to the mandolin sound comes through its excitation of the strings -- and not from any excitation of the pick itself. Even when you hear that "pick slap" noise from the pick hitting the strings, most of the sound from that contact is launched from the string, and not from the pick!

It's therefore slightly misleading to suggest that a pick might be somehow chosen for its "acoustic qualities." It is certainly chosen for its physical characteristics, and ability to coax sound from plucked strings, so the mass, stiffness, damping, shape, and edge all come into play, here. But the pick itself it is not vibrating in the acoustic range, and it's neither producing nor projecting any of the sound we hear: the mandolin strings and mandolin body do that.

So I would not be inclined to say that a pick is chosen for its intrinsic "acoustic properties" (ability to generate/resonate sound), per se, but rather for its ability to interact with the acoustic properties of the strings and the tonewoods in the instrument. Those are the things that are doing the vibrating, not the pick.

[sunburst]

Not sure if it was one word or two so I looked it up … http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Tonewood/en-en/

Thanks. I had to quit reading. Too much unsubstantiated stuff there for me.

[Dale Ludewig]

Same here.

[MediumMando5722]

In my ever so humble opinion, the drop test for picks is useless. I said this once before, but would you judge your mandolin by how it sounds when dropped on a table?

[Explorer]

In my ever so humble opinion, the drop test for picks is useless. I said this once before, but would you judge your mandolin by how it sounds when dropped on a table?

The one place where a drop test is useful is in gauging what kind of clicking artifacts a particular pick will cause when contacting the strings prior to the pluck.

So, a hard, stiff pick will likely have a lot of click, and a felt pick will have none at all.

At some point after a friend had been pressuring a group of us to try out his expensive pick, we did a blind test at a nice store with lots of mandos. One of the picks, the clear favorite, had great fundamental, and no observable pick click. It turned out to be a rubber pick sold for ukulele and bass, selling for a few bucks. I imagine it's embarrassing when you yourself chose a $2 pick over your $35 pick in terms of sound, especially after pushing people into the test in the first place.

[rfd]

what's more import to me than the pick material is its shape. as with guitar, i just use the rounded edge and not the pointed edge. then it's thickness. thick as a brick is good for me.

[rfd]

... I imagine it's embarrassing when you yourself chose a $2 pick over your $35 pick in terms of sound, especially after pushing people into the test in the first place.

the music business is fulla self serving nonsense. rely on real world use and not marketing hype meant to fleece your pocket book.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From Explorer - "...A flexible carbon fiber pick.." Where did you pick that term up from ?. I hope that it wasn't from a website selling 'Wegen' picks !. One seller claimed that the Wegens were CF. I e-mailed Michel Wegen with that info. & he was a tad more than amused. Carbon fiber is exactly that - 'fiber' & is unsuitable for making picks.

Quote - "..So, a hard, stiff pick will likely have a lot of click.." Exactly what i found when i used a 2.0 mm thick Primetone pick for the first time a couple of weeks back (see below). However,when i angled the pick correctly,so that i struck the strings with the bevel,it vanished. Also, the ''hard,stiff'' Dawg & Golden gate picks i tried out,produced no 'pick click' at all. The edges were so smooth & rounded that they hardly produced any sound at all !.
It does depend largely on pick thickness / material & shape. Used wrongly,i suspect we could make almost any pick 'click'.

With thin picks,some of the energy goes into bending the pick instead of imparting a 'push' to the strings = less volume. Thicker picks impart more energy to 'pushing' the strings = more volume. I bought a string winder from a store in Scotland a couple of years ago. Along with the winder,they sent me an assortment of picks - freebies - one of which is 0.5mm thick - it's the only 'silent' (almost) pick i posess !!. It imparts so little energy to the strings that i can almost get as much volume from the mandolin by 'blowing' across them.

I've just bought some 2.0 mm thick Primetone picks for use on my Lebeda mandolin, & the additional volume that it puts out is quite amazing compared to the 1.5 mm PT pick that i was using. The 1.5 mm PT's do flex 'very slightly' when you try to bend them between your fingers,the 2.0 mm PTs are 'totally' stiff,
Ivan

[Marty Jacobson]

Thanks. I had to quit reading. Too much unsubstantiated stuff there for me.

It's from Wikipedia... and it can be changed. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonewood

In fact, it already has, since the sensagent page was pulling from an older version. The new introduction reads like this:
"Tonewood refers to specific wood varieties that possess tonal properties that make them good choices for use in acoustic stringed instruments."

[sblock]

Pick click depends on several things, some of which have been touched on already. The "drop test" for dropping a pick on a hard surface and listening to the sound produced is more-or-less USELESS in evaluating pick click, because it only probes a fraction of the physical properties responsible for click.

The level of pick-click noise can depend on all these things:

1) The contour of the the edge, and any bevel, of the pick
2) The thickness of the pick at its edge
3) The angle with which the pick hits the strings
4) How firmly the pick is grasped in the hand
5) How far the pick is grasped from the corner used
6) The pointiness/roundedness of the pick corner
7) How "slippery" the pick is against the string, i.e., string friction
8) How the edge of the pick responds to playing wear
9) The mass (density), and the size and shape, of the pick
10) The stiffness of the pick material
11) The damping of the pick material

Note that the items (1) through (6) are independent of any material used to make the pick -- they only depend on aspects of the pick geometry (shape, thickness, edge) and on playing technique! And also note that items (3), (4), and (5) are all controlled entirely by the the player, and are not a function of the pick itself.

Items (7) through (11) do depend on the material used to make the pick. But the first two of these, (7) and (8), which relate to friction and wear, are NOT probed by the "drop test" at all!

Only items (9), (10), and (11) will change the tone heard in a drop test. The resonant frequency ("ring") of a dropped pick depends on its shape & size, its density, its stiffness, and its internal damping. And nothing else! And it depends on these things in a fairly complex way, so the individual properties are not actually probed in this test; only a weighted aggregate, if you will.

All this argues that a "drop test" is no way to probe how a pick will function, and no way to determine something about pick click.

Picks that ring freely in a drop test tend to be fairly stiff, with less internal damping and lower mass. But that is not really what makes some picks sound great, nor what reduces click. BlueChip picks wear longer and slide off the string more easily, which is why many folks like them. Wegens, Primetones, and BlueChips all have carefully-produced bevels on the edge, and are made from very stiff material. Golden Gate and Dawg picks tend to be free of bevels. And so on. Many factors to consider!

[Explorer]

From Explorer - "...A flexible carbon fiber pick.." Where did you pick that term up from ?. I hope that it wasn't from a website selling 'Wegen' picks !. One seller claimed that the Wegens were CF. I e-mailed Michel Wegen with that info. & he was a tad more than amused. Carbon fiber is exactly that - 'fiber' & is unsuitable for making picks.

When you ask where I learned of and saw such picks, no, it was not in reference to Wegen. There are numerous companies making carbon fiber picks.

You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that an article made from "carbon fiber" only consists of the carbon fibers. In fact, the carbon fiber matrix is embedded in another potting material, epoxy or something similar. There are all kinds of things made what you call "fiber," including mandolins and guitars which are much stronger than wood instruments, less prone to damage, and which don't damp out as much of the string frequencies as wood. Interestingly, that's why companies have to introduce damping material into the interior of such instruments, in order to make it sound more wood-like, if they want to make something voiced like a wood instrument.

I'm glad I could be the one to let you know about these new (relatively) developments in musical instruments and picks!

[Ivan Kelsall]

From Explorer - " ...There are numerous companies making carbon fiber picks.". Please - which ones ?. Carbon fiber is exactly as i said - a fiber material which requires combining with a resin to form a 'matrix'. Cut any edge & there are fiber ends showing = NOT suitable for picks which require a smooth beveled edge. I worked in CF design & manufacture for close to 14 years - so i do have some understanding of CF & it's uses.

There are a number of resins used to make the CF matrix - Epoxy / Polyester & Vinylester - none of which are suitable for pick material. Also,the fact that CF requires laying up & curing,either cold cure or in a heated autoclave to consolidate the matrix = very time consuming & expensive,not something that pick manufacturers are very keen on.

Carbon fiber has NO properties at all which would make that material desirable for use a a pick. It's used where strength combined with lightness is required ( when combined with Kevlar),most usually in aircraft design & manufacture (me) & in racing car design, where fuel to weight ratios are all important.

There are some plastic picks (Delrin / Nylon), reinforced on the surface with CF but they are not 100% stand alone CF picks,so CF isn't totally out of the pick arena,
Ivan

[Explorer]

If you wish to explore who is making carbon fiber picks, the internet will quickly allow you to find numerous examples for you and, if you wish, you may berate them for their choices. I just commented on the existence of what I have seen and touched.

If you want to claim that the companies claiming to make such picks are all lying, I'll not stop you.

[billkilpatrick]

This thread is getting very picky ...

[danb]

I've experimented with making picks too. My own findings agree with what others say..

- a thinner pick produces more "clack" sound or the sound of the attack itself. A lot of Irish players prefer these for the snap it gives to triplets
- thicker picks don't neessarily produce more bass, but they produce less treble on the string strike
- sharper points give more abrupt/percussive/clear pick attack sound
- rounter points give a less distinct sound to the initial strike on the note, perhaps a more pleasing way to get volume out without sounding like you are hitting too hard.
- bevels on the pick help make sure you aren't striking with a corner/edge.. so a brand new pick with no wear or bevels has a different sound until those 6 surfaces get polished smoother from playing

Points are prone to wearing off quickly on most materials..

And from experience, it's well worth the effort to get ahold of some very fine polishing cloths (3m makes very nice ones ) and keep the playing surfaces smoother on your horn and similar picks

I think it is a bit like a bow. Easily overlooked as an important part of your tone, and a nice tool to match with your technique properly

[Bertram Henze]

I am no expert in carbon fiber, but if picks cannot be made of that, these people are trying hard to create the impression anyway.

[billkilpatrick]

I tried a very thick pick once called a "stubby" - the noise was overwhelming. Looking forward to getting a 2.0 Primetone on my next visit to the States - purely in the pursuit of science.

[MediumMando5722]

The people making those carbon fiber picks don't seem to know much about picks, based on the descriptions of the thicknesses.