The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello to everybody. I'm living this dilemma because in my group I use to play pedal steel guitar and banjo (not together ) 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.

I can say that in both cases I didn’t have any lesson from Professionals, so maybe I do not have any specific 100% right hand position. Anyway it works

I'm curious to know if there are similar experience especially from you Professionals.
Just for yr info I use Banjo pick set on my resonator !!
Thanks a lot for sharing. Daniele

I use diff picks for lap steel and pedal steel. do whatever you do to feel comfortable.

I'll use the same picks for pedal steel, lap steel, dobro, or banjo. That's what works for me, but everyone is different. The only differences is when I play dobro, my thumbpick has 2-sided tape inside to keep the pick from turning, since I have to dig in more. I have two sets of identical picks - one that I keep with the psg, and the aforementioned one with the tape for dobro.

Thank you Jonathan & Michael for yr feedback.
I was also using same pick set for all instruments until some months ago. I used the pedal steel pick also for banjo. However I found recently that using more bent picks I can have a more clean and fast rolls on my banjo. Maybe because I've changed Banjo type recently and the strings action is lower than previous banjo. In the end the fact is that when I change instruments (it is happening 4/5 time during the concert) I have to wear different picks to do my best on both instrument.

Over the last 30 years I have found the best combo or me is Hoffmeyer finger picks for banjo steel and dobro with Bluechip Thumbpick for banjo and dobro with Blue Herco for steel. You only have to change your Thumbpick once and keep backups in you seat. It's also good for a dark stage.

I use stouter picks with a different angle for Dobro, and can't use the Herco on Dobro

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.....

After using several brands I found the best solution for my fingers are PROPIK metal. (BRASS version for pedal steel)while as thumb I prefear the plastic GOLDENGATE for all instruments. (I'm shortening it a bit for Banjo) However, I will include in the next order to Ederly also a set of ACRI to try. I'm curious also to try the PROPIK Cobalt brass plated..let's see how they works on my fingers. However in the end I see that is difficult to wear same picks for all the instrument. Maybe for pedal steel / reso / lap steel some compromise can be reached, but I think the same is not working on banjo. IMO ... but let me go ahead with further experiments. who knows. Thanks to all.