Red Bear Picks

Duozona

Has anoyone tried one of these red bear gypsy jazz picks. It lists it as being made from a 'chemically similar' material as tortis shell. Any thoughts? They are a but pricey!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Red-Bear-Trading-Ne ... dZViewItem

-Chuck

http://www.duozona.com

pdaigle

They are great!

You can read my review here:

http://djangobooks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1194

and more here:

http://www.djangobooks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36&highlight=tortis:

NewcastleBud

Just my opinion but... I love this pick!! I was a die hard Wegen 250 user but I had a spare 30 bucks burning a hole in my pocket so I ordered the Gypsy Jazzer from Gryphon instruments in California. Wow! Great tone, great feel, long life!

Bob Holo

Just for grins you folks ought to try the Dunlop cheapie pick Bireli uses in the live in Austria concert. You have to run it over your jeans or some 600 or greater grit sandpaper to round the edges a little (or just play it for a gig)
as the edges are too sharp on a new one. But - bottom line, it's the best cheap pick out there. So, if you have 50 cents burning a hole in your pocket you will be pretty glad you discovered them. Oh, and the benefit is that as you're at festivals and jams and people say: "Hey, can I borrow a pick?" you can smile and say: "Sure - here" and not have to worry about remembering to get it back at the end of the night.

There is a guy on ebay who goes by the moniker "yardsailor" who sells them for a really low price. They're kind of hard to get - maybe Dunlop doesn't make them anymore but this guy seems to have an endless stash of them and you can buy them in lots of 24.

pdaigle

I thought the pick Bireli was using was the Dunlop Delrin 500 in 1.50mm.

That's the one that Ritary uses (at least that's what he was using when I met him in Montreal.) Ritary plays with one of the 2 round (corner) edges and NOT the tip.

Bob Holo

I think it's the Dunlop 1.14mm

The reasons I say that are color and shape. I'm sort of a geek (shh... don't let anyone else know... I don't think they've noticed...) so at any rate, I stepped through the Birelli video on the Interactual player (on my PC) which allows you to freeze frames and enlarge areas. I froze some places where they were showing the pick and blew the pick up to near screen size. It was hard to tell until I got this shot where he was reloading from a rest-stroke and about the bottom 60% of the pick was showing nearly perfectly perpendicular to the camera and it was the exact shape and color of the Dunlop 1.14.

Being a pick nut - I also have the one your picture shows. It works well in the way you stated (round corners, not sharp one) but it also needs some work before it's playable because it comes with that sharp seam around it.

pdaigle

Yeah I agree about the seam.

The other thing I do (I got that from Ritary also) is use the point of a knife to scratch the surface a bit to make it rougher and less slippery.

Thanks for the info on Bireli...I stand corrected AND I will try that 1.14 mm.

nwilkins

Bireli uses a number of Dunlop picks of varying thicknesses, but people I know who have met him and asked to see his pick have almost all reported that it was the one pdaigle posted.

Also, by "Bireli in Austria video" do you mean the Live in Vienne DVD? That concert took place in Vienne France, not Vienna Austria.

dennis

i saw a bireli concert where he played with a red Jazz III pick... i saw another where he used tortoise.

nwilkins

and on the Vienne DVD extras it shows him using a green dunlop while recording the first Gypsy Project CD. The conclusion? He doesn't care what kind of pick he uses.

pallopenna

Which is interesting because in an Acoustic Guitar profile (if I remember correctly), under the "Gear" section he said that the pick is almost as important to his sound as the guitar. But then he didn't actually say what pick he was using at the time. So you're probably right; he doesn't care what he uses and could probably get that sound from just about anything.