Does your pick make you faster?
Picks need to move fast. They need to change direction quickly and be easy to control, so you can move with as little effort as possible. My personal view is the Jazz 3 is currently the best established attempt. It's small, light and fairly hard, all of which help. They say once you go to a smaller harder pick you don't go back. It's like your little secret and you wonder how anyone every played with something bigger.
The reigning champion
The Jazz 3 has existed for many generations and it's a staple of shredders, lead players, jazz players (you'd hope) and anyone who has a need for speed and control. "But that can't be it," you say, "it's barely changed for 20 years!" Definitely not. Before there was the Jazz 3 there was... Not the Jazz 3. People hadn't figured it out. So now everyone riding the crest of high speed smugness may actually be playing in treacle compared to the art of the possible. So what are the options?
And now for something completely different...
Jump for a second to racing motorcycles, they're narrow, they need to change direction fast and need to be very controlled. So what did the racing teams do in their unending quest to be fastest? Honda referred to the technique as mass centralisation, that is to move all the weight to as close to one point as possible (and as close to the pivot point). When you do this, the bike turns faster, grip is improved and the way the bike turns is more predictable - see this video of pro racer Gino Rea to get the idea.
Tying it together
So this is the same goal and in a very broad sense, bikes and picks are similar - same goals, both tall, both narrow... Is it possible to do this with a pick? Yes. And I'll bet you'd notice, just like you don't see classic bikes racing superbikes and winning... Move the weight of the pick to the middle and the heaviest part is under your thumb, boom! Still light but more more control and also more grip.
So why hasn't anyone done it before? Honestly, who knows but the whole game is pushing the edge so we should try and maybe we all need to sit under trees and drop apples on our heads more. If Honda can make the weight of 3 men change direction at 150mph in less than a second, we can make picks faster too.
Is anyone else looking at it this way?
You probably guessed we might be thinking about this or I wouldn't talk about it. So yes, we are doing something with this on the Precision Pick. But aside from us, you might try Chicken Picks. So if you're ready to make faster easier, you're in the right place.
Until next time! Dan