What Is The Best Material For A Guitar Pick? Guitar picks are often looked at by musicians, especially by beginners and intermediate guitarists. This is because guitar picks are often cheap that it’s hard to imagine that a small piece of material has an impact on playability and musicality.

A Must-Read: How Do I Stop My Guitar Picks From Dropping?

Guitar picks can be made from different materials and each material has a huge impact on the playability and tone. Most of the available today in the market are commonly made of plastics such as Nylon, Celluloid, or Delrin. Other materials include wood, stone, and Tortoiseshell, which is now banned because of extinction.

Here’s a detailed guide on explaining why choosing the right guitar picks will help every guitarist on their musical journey. Using the wrong pick can hurt or trigger any developments and hinder your technical abilities.

Nylon Guitar Picks

Nylon is one of the best materials to use in guitar picks, this is because nylon can be quite flexible and always the go-to choice for most musicians for decades now. Some guitarists say a flexible material like nylon, can produce a mellow or warm sound when compared to harder picks, and some explain that this pick produces a brighter tone. Whatever tone you are looking for, using Nylon will give you a much-defined tone compared to other plastics.

Nylon guitar picks can produce a vintage tone that can be heard in some of the early rock and blues music. Dunlop Variety pack is one big manufacturer of nylon guitar picks, they offer solid flat color and usually textured grip that only cost 6.97 USD.

Celluloid Guitar Picks

Celluloid is the original substitute for tortoiseshell, many celluloid guitars are modeled to look like they have the same design and quality of a tortoiseshell. This particular material has been in the music industry for decades now and a lot of guitarists are go-to picks for vintage playing. It has a more flexible quality than tortoiseshell but much stiffer than nylon. These particular picks produce a snapper tone with more high-end quality than nylon.

Celluloid guitar picks have a pearl-like texture that emulates beauty than any other guitar picks. One famous brand that markets this type of guitar picks is, Fender. Fender Premium Celluloid pack contains different thickness and designs for a guitarist to try out, it costs 10.99 USD, you have a variety of picks to choose from.

Stone Guitar Picks

Stone is a very dense material with unique tone properties. The only problem with stone is that they are quite hard to manipulate and work with especially for thin gauges. This particular guitar pick is 1.9mm or thicker and regardless of the gauge, a stone pick doesn’t have any flexibility in them.

These particular picks are not useful for strumming chords but they are good for single lines. They produce a thumping tone from the regular guitar. The surface of the stone produces some friction and unpleasant noises which means they are better to use for electric guitars. Stoneworks Guitar Picks is probably one of their top producers, costing for about 20 USD.

Conclusion

While it largely depends on what you’re looking for personally, a guitar pick will add definition and life to your playability. Not only they are comfortable to use but they also look great and consist of different variations of design, worth a try!