Pick thickness

Twang · September 2020

I noticed a player I much admire, Duved Dunayevsky, uses a 5mm pick. He specialises in early swing guitar and goes to great lengths to achieve authenticity in his playing. On realising he uses a 5mm pick I got inspired to dig out my old 5mm Wegen that I hadn't picked up in years and only purchased out of curiosity in the first place. I have to say I've had a lot of fun playing with it and am considering sticking with it to see if I continue to like it. There are some great advantages. The fashion at the moment seems to have swung the other way with a lot of great players using cheap 1.5-2.00mm picks.

This got me thinking about what kind of picks were really being used in the 20's and 30's. The general opinion is that players were using ultra thick tortoise shell picks but I can't find a huge amount of evidence to support this. Just vague references to the use of heavy picks. Maybe there was as much diversity in pick thickness as there is now. Who knows? Has anyone got any interesting info relating to this?

ChristopheCarington · September 2020

Good video with some views on a Django Pick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mysq55kQg8c

billyshakes · September 2020

I thought he Django just used an old comb? 😁

Twang · September 2020

Haha, I didn’t make that up! I got it from the Dregni biography. I’ll try to find the page later 😁

Thanks for the video Christophe, much appreciated. It doesn’t tell you a lot though. Is this the pick that Django and other swing guitarists used through the swing era? Or maybe a horrible experiment that went wrong and he couldn’t wait to give it away. Is it 2mm thick or 6mm thick?