The Steel Guitar Forum

Use a small strip of 3M Micropore medical paper tape on the back of your fingers to secure the picks to your skin and give you improved pick attack and comfort.

You will feel more confident with your playing with the feeling that your picks are completely secure and will not loosen or snag on any strings. No more digging into your palms or fingers with the picks to keep them secure as they loosen.

Now I can pick as hard as I feel like and it feels great.

Make sure you get medical tape and not just any kind of tape. The medical tape is designed to be used specifically on the skin. It is soft, flexible, breathable (Won't come off with sweat). It's also easy to tear pieces to the size you want. It's what they use in hospitals to attach IV tubes and bandages to skin. the most common, and probably best medical tape is 3M Micropore. I use the 1 inch size tape.

The tape only takes a minute to put on before playing and is easily removed after playing. After trying this, There's no going back for me. No matter how good and secure your picks are now, this will make them feel even better.

See the picture below:

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A few years back, I was in the hospital for heart surgery. The most painful thing I ever experienced was NOT the surgery itself, but removal of that surgical tape from the IV line after it was over. I almost went right through the ceiling.
So yea; I would imagine it holds the picks on pretty good!

Rich, please don't frighten the pedal steel players
Removing the tape from the fingers does not hurt at all, you probably had the tape over some body hair or surgical scars, therefore the pain.

But you're right about holding the picks on pretty good. I'm still really excited about this discovery. Such a simple thing, such an improvement.

You can buy the tape online for $20 or so for a dozen rolls, that should last a couple of years.

Update: After experimenting with the tape some more, I found the ideal amount for MAXIMUM control. See the picture below. That is after an hour of seriously hard non-stop picking, and the tape is still all intact.

Wrapping the tape all around the finger tip with only the picking blade sticking out provides the most control and ferocity.

TIP: while putting the tape around pick and finger, have the finger/thumb joints in bent position and apply tape with fingertips/thumb bent. Have the tape also go past the end of the thumb-pick wrap and under the thumb, leaving only picking blade exposed.

I did an experiment: I put on my most uncomfortably fitting finger/thumb picks from an old junk-pick box with the tape (taped in the same way as the picture below), and then I put on my most comfortable picks without the tape. And guess what? the uncomfortable picks with tape made me play better.

Seriously, this feels like having picks growing out of your finger tips like claws that you were born with, to attack and kill a wild steel guitar.

There is a discussion I read here recently about how to sound like Ralph Mooney. This is it: use the tape around your picks and pick the HECK out of that steel guitar as hard as you can until you kill it

Additional bonus, it looks like you & your fingers are ready for a free solo of El Capitan.

Brooks, they also make this tape in a tan colour that makes it look closer to the colour of the skin. It probably won't look as noticeable then (Might be a solution for more image conscious steel players). I have it on order and would have used it for the picture if I had it (But the white is good for the picture because you can see the tape better for demonstrating here.) all jokes aside, who cares what it looks like when it makes you SOUND better.

But can you still grip a beer during breaks in the gig?

\ paul

I use "Stik-N-Pik" which came in a tube like chapstick lip balm. Its non toxic and not messy. The tube I have, I've had for at least 4 years and its still got a lot left.

It lasts too long as the company that made it went out of business. I guess because of poor repeat sales of product.

Apply a light coat of fingernail polish to the inside of your picks. Moisten your fingers before putting your picks on and you’ll have to pull hard to get them off.

Jack and Roger: that is OK advice. It probably helps to keep the picks on, but using the tape takes it to another level. With your method, the bands around the pick are still exposed and can snag on a string. My biggest finger-pick nightmare is having a pick snag on a string, fall off, and get stuck in or under the strings. When this happens, you can't just go on playing without the pick, you have to fish it out from the strings first; it's annoying and down-right embarrasing.

Notice in my second picture with the tape, it covers all around the bands, leaving no place to snag. You could literally pick up your guitar by the strings and throw it at the wall, and, after seeing it crash, right away sit at another guitar and play, without adjusting your picks.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Buddy Emmons, which many people consider the best, used to be a boxer and was into boxing. I bet he attacked the strings like punching, I think I even saw it in an interview where he said that. You need to be able to attack the strings with ferocity to sound good, and the tape helps you do that.

Another benefit I noticed is that I can play longer without causing discomfort to my fingers because I can have the finger-pick bands a little bit looser and let the tape do the work instead. Having snug-fitting picks will eventually dig into your finger tip skin near the fingernail base and cause pain/discomfort.

How long before we get posts about how the brown tape sounds better than the white?

I've been playing steel for almost 70 years, 40 of those Pedal Steel, and I've never "snagged" a string. I can play a 4 hour gig and my fingers are not sore.

What's wrong with spit?
Erv

Erv, nothing wrong with it. That's what I used prior to this.

Jack, You must be a better player than most. Having played for such a long time, you are probably well set in your playing ways that I would not expect you to adopt this. Maybe newer players who are still struggling can benefit. That snagged pick thing only happened a few times to me, but it was annoying enough that I want to avoid it from happening again. At one point I was so frustrated with finger/thumb picks that I gave them up completely.

Alan, the brown tape I have on order should sound better. It costs twice as much as the white. We will see.

The nice thing about spit, you always have it with you!
Erv

That's hilarious Kenny Hope the missus can spare a few.

Nice Kenny, I think you're onto something. I had been using hose clamps but with those you're totally screwed if you lose your screwdriver and you need to take leak

Tough crowd.

Brooks - How were you able to take a picture before the blood started flowing? That’s the nastiest thing I’ve seen all day!

We got a bunch of jokers on the forum. That is great. I got a laugh out of those pictures

Ian, I notice in your picture with the hose clamp that you have some kind of white material padding under the wrap of your finger-picks (index and middle finger). Is this padding also part of the joke-hose-clamp or do you actually use this padding in your picks when you play? If you do, this tells me that you at some point also had difficulty with pick discomfort and came up with your solution. If you try the 3M Micropore tape on the outside of the pick, I bet you won't need the padding anymore, which looks very bulky and may be affecting picking accuracy.

When I use the tape now, I don't even need to have a differently shaped finger pick for my index and middle fingers anymore. I just keep them all in a pile and pick whichever one for any finger. they fit great. No more looking at which is the middle finger pick and which is index, just pick any one.

When I get my picks all taped up and play my pedal steel, I feel like a hockey player who just taped up his hockey stick and skates and is out playing a big game. Slap-shot to the G-String...Score!

I'll have to try this, sometimes in summer when I'm sweaty the picks start to slip. In other forums i've also seen recommendations for Nexcare Absolute Waterproof First Aid Tape (wrap finger under the fingerpick band).

Gorilla snot.

I don't know if it has been mentioned but, for years I just put a dab of New Skin, (some call it Liquid Bandage) inside all three picks, it works great, comes off a bit hard at break time, but can be re-used after the break.

To take this one step further, what about a really thin glove with the picks attached to it. It could be like one of those support gloves that massage your fingers while you play. You could just slip the glove off before you drink that beer at break time.