Cycle of picks

A Good Friday morning to all. Lovely long weekend, yes?

I'm sure may of us here would have purchased & kept a few picks in our collection. Even if you're not a collector, you would have wisely kept a few for referential purposes, no? The primary reason here, for keeping stuff which you less preferred, is to bring them out on days when you think all else failed. On playing days, my ritual is to have a few picks out & at the ready. Even if I already have a favourite, go-to pick in hand, at a certain point in time, I'd switch picks just for variety's sake. You'd be surprised to discover that the ones you cast aside as spares or back-ups would be more adept than you would have believed them to be in the first place. I'm saying this because for those of us with more than one guitar especially, would have different string gauges, neck radii & string action, among other factors, which would react differently with a different pick profile. If we don't own a few picks to begin with, we wouldn't have discovered this special adaptation so to speak.

In the example above, I had the (L-R) Karma (DAW manufacturing), Mummy (V-pick) & Stubby (Dunlop) picks at the ready. As you've noticed, it's actually a line up of (L-R), flat, grooved & dented pick surfaces. I react differently to the feel, I play differently using these picks with various guitars, my picking efficiency gets affected with these picks, my brutal riffs work better with non-flat pick surfaces & the list goes on with slight variable differences. So which of these picks work best for any playing situation? None. I need different picks for different playing circumstances; different tools for different jobs as they say. So the next time you are on the verge of disposing seemingly dud & useless picks, do re-consider 😃