Early American guitar plectrums

King_Cardboard

Ok history nerds, I have been on a kick of early American guitarists like Lang, Nick Lucas and especially Bobby Leecan and was wondering what sort of set up was popular for the sounds of that time. Obviously most of us know all about the French sound and opt for the selmer guitars, light strings and massive picks appropriate to that period when we want the tone and volume of the early Django stuff, but what about chasing the appropriate style of early American sounds? It’s a different beast immediately with either flat top Nick Lucas style guitars or big old arch tops. Heavier strings in monel 80/20 bronze or nickel. I have guitars set up this way for this sound, but the one that escapes me is the plectrums. I know that tortoise shell predated anything synthetic, but by the later 20’s when flat picked guitar records we’re finally being recorded, celluloid seemed to have taken over. I can’t find anything on the thickness used at the time though. Listening to most of these records, they seemed to have a massive booming guitar sound with single note lines that just cut through, and pre amplification volume must of been a priority. Any history buffs have some ideas of early guitar set up/gear?

scot

http://anniespicks.weebly.com/

A lot of info and photographs of old picks on this website, included links to some good reference books if you're really obsessed. An old jazz guitarist I met in Florida in the early 80s told me he usually strung his archtops .062 to .016 with a wound B when he was a working pro in NYC. A Fender thin probably wouldn't work with this set up...

Russell Letson

That Anniespicks site recommends Will Hoover's slim 1995 volume, Picks! (now OP and commanding some stiff prices on Amazon). I wondered what became of the writer and found, to my surprise, that he'd been a reasonably successful Nashville songwriter, had taken a reporting job in Honolulu around 1986, lost that gig when the two Honolulu dailies merged, and gone back to playing. He was still active and doing some writing as of five years ago--

https://www.honolulumagazine.com/the-story-of-how-singer-songwriter-arlo-guthrie-owed-me-50-cents-over-a-bet/

Not much gypsy-jazzish about all this, though there's a certain amount of gypsying around in Hoover's story. Hoover seems to be about my age, so there's hope that he's still around.

Buco

Loved the story, thanks for digging this out @Russell Letson

littlemark

From what I understand they used stiff picks but not thick like Gypsy picks.