Filing Picks that Are Too Rounded to Save Money

I prefer to gig with medium picks, but I like to practice with heavy picks.  Very few brands of medium picks last more than 4hrs, that is, unless you file them, such that they regain their shape.  Even my heavy picks wear down over the course of a few days.  I like to save money, even if it is only pennies.

I am not choosey about the type of pick I practice with.  For practice, most picks are made of hard plastic, and that is great.  When you pluck a string with hard plastic, Newton’s Laws say that for every reaction, there is an opposite but equal reaction.  That means, the harder you pluck a string, the greater the bounce back.  Being able to control the bounce back of a string is a part of being a good guitarist.  The better you are at guitar, the better you can control your pick.  Using harder picks is thus an excellent way of practicing in order to get better pick control.

I actually prefer to gig with nylon picks, but I like to practice with hard plastic.  Why?  If you can control a hard plastic pick, then you can control a nylon pick.  But, if you can control a nylon pick, you may not be able to control a hard plastic pick.

I don’t like to spend much money on practice.  In an earlier blog, I already suggested having a practice guitar in order to save your good guitar for gigs.  The same is true for me with picks.  When the picks I use become too rounded, I file them down, but such that they retain the shape of a new pick.  This makes them smaller, and you guessed it even harder to control!  That is, because they are harder to control, old picks are better to practice with, if they have been filed down.

The clever among you are might be suggesting that a file is more expensive than a pick.  However, you don’t need an expensive file.  A common file that you can buy at CVS for filing down foot callous is an excellent weapon that can be used in guitar pick salvation.