A long time back, I started using a metal thumbpick on pedal steel to equalize the tone out - the Propiks all-metal ones are sweet - but then several years back, Sonny Landreth re-ignited my somewhat obsessive slide guitar quest - too - and I started playing upstrokes with the thumbpick again, and it's just no longer safe for me to be around anything with a metal thumbpick on. For ultimate wham it's hard to beat Golden Gate X-heavies with the band trimmed to not catch and the blade shortened, but functionally, a regular old Dunlop/Planet Waves/National type thumbpick, shortened a bit, gets to the notes just as well and doesn't click as much if you start piling up a few gain stages. The "ACRI" fingerpicks are ridiculously comfortable -
When you get the band right, they just can't hurt you, move, or fall off. However, I do have to shorten the blades, make them pointier, and roll them up towards my fingers. To sneak up towards an answer here - with both these, and Dunlops, I find that the more I point the blades and curve them up around my fingertips, the less effect different angles for different instruments has.
You're trying to get to a point of maximum contact whatever you're on. But I'll settle for "strong" and "not scratching" as long as I'm getting something out of them. I have a whole jar of weirdly-bent pick experiments, but a separate set for every single instrument - the .018's for this and the extra-angled ones for seven-string slide, and these for this and those for that - yikes. It may be, even probably
is "best" in one way, but what a mess. For the past year or so, I have actually been trying to make a valiant effort to just play all my parts on a D10 or S10 steel guitar. I use different bars, a couple of pitch shifters to play bass, and drastic EQ and presets to try for different sounds. I'm a better (at least
employable) bass player than anything else, but bass playing is all about playing bass
parts, if you can play the part right on a 3-foot kazoo you're the bass player. I know it's there
somewhere in the steel, and as long as I'm sitting right here in front of this here steel guitar, well.....
) Lately I've realized that it is better to use different pick sets depending on the instrument. Playing banjo I wear bent and angled metal picks + plastic shortened thumb pick. Playing PSG I wear standard metal picks, not bent + standard plastic thumb pick. I believe this is due to the position of my right hand and wrist. They are more angled and less horizontal for banjo respect PSG position.
