My Wegen gave me a Wedgie

Bill Barnes

You know, it's funny; since I posted this in April, when I first experienced the Wegen, a lot of Weter has gone under the mustached bridge. I had gone to the more newby-friendly 2.5 Wegens and used them for months. But just the other day I went back to the old clunky 3.5 and, too my surprise, found that it no longer slowed me down or felt clunky- in fact, quite the opposite. Tremolo is easier, there's better control and the tone is fatter. It no longer feels unnatural- I suppose that's progress.

Now, if I could just get comfortable with the guitar resting horizontally on my right leg...

Tele295

They are amazing picks. My GF could hear the difference standing in front more than I could while playing. I asked her if the Wegen 3.5mm Gypsy Jazz pick really made $15 worth of difference in the sound. "Yes," she said, without hesitation, and I was sold....

She has now absconded with that Wegen to go with her Cigano grande bouche, and I had to get another Wegen for me!

frater

I also dig John Pearse's horn picks (although they don't last long!). Even those made of wood are not bad: IMO ebony has more grip while rosewood is smoother on the strings.

crookedpinky

I have an on-off relationship with my Wegen. I can't use the thinner Wegens in fact I gave one away but kept the big one, about 5mm. Sometimes it works for me and sometimes not.

My regular picks are Dugain - an acetate one or one of the horn types - although they wear away and need re-profiling every month or two depending on use.

Recently I've been experimenting with bone picks, these are made from heart shaped discs meant for necklace making. I bought 30 blanks for about £8/$11 from a craft supplies shop and just filed them into different shapes and profiles. Some shapes dont work but some do and sound really good. The next thing is to improve the grip as they are quite slippy.

So for me Wegens dont really work, neither do Moustache plectrums, nor coconut. Having said that some of the guys here in Glasgow use all of the above and they sound fine on their guitars - maybe there's something about the combination of guitar/strings/pick at play here.

Who cares as long as you're playing and enjoying,
Alan

pinkgary

I started with wegans, a trimus 500, then a GJ 3.5, then a trimus 2.5, all good picks. I prefer the trimus' shape, the way i hold it sets my hand up for gypsy picking, the normal pick shape sets me up for playing blues/anything else.

But, i've found a new baby,.....

RED BEAR, style C, Gypsy Jazz. It's got the best tone BY FAR. I see why tortoise shell is THE material now. No going back to anything else for me...

Citrus

I LOVE my Wegens...been using the Gypsy Jazz for lead stuff and the Button for Rhythm stuff...Haven't started comping yet...theze crazy thumb chords!

I have gone the gamut from very thin picks now to here. I USED to be famous for breaking strings. In fact I had fans and bandmates making bets on the number of strings I might break on a 4hr set night...Electric guitar...Loud Rockin Funk....
That is now a thing of the past..been a solid month of playing all my guitars with the Wegens and not ONE string broken. I am talking 4 to six hrs a day.
I am a completely different player now in just a few months time.

Wifey says I "shed picks"...well she used to. I no longer need a pocket full of pics for different things.. I have three and its enough for anything I need to play.

Matthias Lenz

I also like the use of Wegen Picks. The 3,5mm Gypsy Jazz is really good for both rhythm and lead, but for leads I prefer the Fatone, as it´s extra bright and adds a lot of sparkle to my "muddy" Gitane Dg 255. It´s just not practical to change between both while playing

A less expensive alternative that I also like are the Dunlop Primetone picks (I prefer the XL shape), but only the 3mm ones. The 5mm ones have very sharp angled bevels and seem like a bad copy of a Wegen Fatone.
But the 3mm XL are great, have a sharp tip which is nice for leads, and slightly sharpened shoulders which work very well for "swooshy" rhythm playing.

nsmore

Happy New Year,

New to the forum...great info, so thanks. I recently purchased the 'In the Style of Stochelo Rosenberg' DVD and, as far as I can tell it looks like he's using a white flatpicking pick (Wegen has them) because I see holes in it for gripping, and I have not seen an 'authentic' Gypsy pick that looks like that. The ones listed on the Wegen site are only 1.4 mm...can that be right? It seems to go against the accepted dogma about heavy picks.

BluesBop Harry

Yeah, Stochelo uses a Big city pick made by Wegen:
http://shoppingcart.djangobooks.com/eco ... _city.html
He prefers the 1.8mm I believe.
It's worth noting that a lot of gypsy jazz players use thin plastic picks: Stochelo, Bireli, Andreas, Adrien, Sebastien, Yorgui, Matcho, Samson... Many like the Dunlops 1.5 o 2mm

Manouche123

I make my own 'Gypsy' picks. I use a kind of very hard plexy (acetate?) like used in neon billboards. 4mm thick. Comes in many colors. It's a copy of the Moustache or Wegen picks.
By making it myself I can customise it to my own fingers and hand. Especially the 'grip' was a problem for me. During rhythm playing my picks are flying away all the time. So I made my own profile. It works for me.
It is - in my opinion - also very important to play with your right hand away from the guitarbody. Your right hand or wrist should not rest on the guitar. That was very difficult to get used with. But it works to get a clean, articulated sound with minimum attack from the pick.
For me, the best right hand player in Gypsy style is Paul 'Tchan Tchou' Vidal. A estoning intonation and a super articulated sound, no matter how fast he is going, clear as a waterfall.