V-picks, By Mrs. V Options

[kaznie_NL]

Hey guys,

I got in contact with Mrs. V from V-picks (check this for more on V-Picks), and she wanted me to post a thank you on our forum! After some more corespondation, here's what she wanted to tell us:

Thank you to all of GMC members! We have taken many orders from your
group and we are grateful. We are a small, family company...so it has
meant a lot to us. We really do care that our customers find the RIGHT
V-Pick for them........every one of our 26 models have a different voice.
It is important to discover what voice that is in your head, and then to
match it with the V-Pick that will duplicate that for you. If you need
help on which V-Pick may be the right one, just contact us and we will
help you.

We are trying to change the way the world of guitartists think about
their guitar picks. The pick is an important tool....much tone is gained
or lost by the pick the musician chooses.

So, again, thank you to all GMC members.
Nancy Smith
Mrs. V

www.v-picks.com

Very kind right? She also contacted Kris about offering a leather porch with a pick as a competition price, so they have spotted GMC. I saw Mr. V was a frampton fan, so we'll just whait for him to see the Frampton lesson and then he'll sign up

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[Vinni Smith]

Well I got them, and they feel great, they are fast, and great for strumming as well as single notes. But there is one BIG problem, whenever I do fast picking on the high strings I get this terrifyingly annoying sound, every time I hit the string with the pick it squeaks incredibly loud. It sounds like I'm tapping my pick on the strings. It's not a pinch harmonic, it's just a pick noise. Just try tapping your pick on the strings over the bridge pickup and that's the same sound. But this sound only happens on the bridge pickup.

I tried it on a crunch setting as well, and I still got that noise. I tried angling my pick the way Vinni does, and it didn't work. I tried changing my pick angle, from holding it parallel to the strings to diagonally and everywhere between, it's just not going away.

I love the way these picks feel so it's a bummer that it makes that noise. Anyone else have the same problem? Any advice from the Smiths?

Thanks for this statement and question. I like it when people bring up this subject. If I may, please allow me to cut and paste the article I wrote on this very issue about a month ago. It was posted on The Gear Page. I hope this helps.....

I would also like to thank everyone here for letting us become part of your forum. This is a very friendly and professional atmosphere here. Unlike some of the forums I have been part of in the past. Please forgive me if I ever step out of line and say something out of context or if I break any rules. I will try my best not to, but again, I have been part of so many forums that I have picked up some pretty bad habbits here and there. You have to develop a thick skin when you put your product on forums for everyone to look at, try, buy, and talk about. You have to take a lot of criticism and sometimes attacks and I have learnd to deal with this over the past few years. I only say that to say this, if I ever come off as a know-it-all or arrogant in any way, please understand I do not mean to for even a minute. That is not who I really am.
Thanks again for allowing Nancy and I to become part of your fun here at GMC.





Every now and then I get a question or complaint about the "chirp" noise you can get when using a V-Pick. I would like to address this issue head on. Now, before I do so, please understand, I do not want to come on as a know-it-all or a guitar god in any way. I consider myself to be a fair guitarist at best. I can downright embarrass myself in music stores at times. On an off day it sounds like I have fallen on my guitar and cannot get up! So, I do not intend to put my playing on a pedestal, or anyone's playing style down at all. We are all different players with different hands, ears, equipment and techniques. I am not addressing this issue to make myself look big in any way. Nor am I trying to make myself look intellegent. Believe me, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. What I have learned about guitars, strings and picks has taken me since 1972 when I started as a 14 year old wanna-be rock star trying to sound like John Fogarty, Carlos Santana and Peter Frampton. I am simply writing this because we are talking about something near and dear to me, the guitar pick. And to be exact, our guitar pick! So, please take this with a spirit and intent of humbleness, honesty and love for our art.

First issue to address is, does the V-Pick make a chirp noise? The answer is yes. Just as any pick makes some kind of noise of it's own, the V-Pick, like all other thick picks makes a chirp noise. Please note at this point, EVERY pick makes some kind of noise. Scratch, chirp, click, flap, scrape, etc. Does the V-Pick make any more chirp than other thick picks? I would answer this by saying it makes less chirp noise than 80% of the thick picks out there. There is one pick on the market that I love dearly that is made of Lexan that I had to stop playing because the chirp was unacceptable. And I like a lot of pick noise! So, I am confident we are in good company with this issue of noise.

What makes this chrip noise. To put it very simply, it is a result of putting a hard material, cast acrylic in this instance, against an already vibrating string. Please note that the string does not need to be previously plucked to be vibrating. Any time you have a string fretted, unless you have muted it with your other hand, it is vibrating to some degree. Why do thicker picks do this more? The answer is very simple. It is because there is more material contacting the string at one given time. Thinner picks do it as well, but to a much lesser degree.

Well then, why play with a thicker pick if it creates these problems? Good question. Because with a thicker pick something is possible to do that is not available with thinner picks. With a thicker pick there is more traveling distance for the bevel to create a "longer point of release". This creates a totally different attack, tone and bloom of the note. Please note at this time, this does not only affect the beginning of each note. Oh no! It sets up the tone and sustain for the complete lifespan of that note. I have proven this time after time over the years and the results are quite eye opening. This is why I have chosen, many years ago to play with very thick plectrums. The other benefit of this bevel design is faster action. The proper bevel coupled with a rounded corner makes for quite a speedy guitar pick with very little resistance to hold you back.

Can this issue be resolved? Can I play with a V-Pick and not get that "Chirp"? The answer is a resounding YES. The fact that it happens to some players and not others, tells me the difference is in the players, because the picks are all exactly the same. It is eliminated with pick angle and a more diciplined right hand. "Are you saying I play sloppy"? I am not saying this at all. I can asure you, I am no better player than you are. However, I have spent enough time with these things that I have studied my playing inside and out, and know exactly what causes the pick and string to react the way they do. "So, I have to change my playing to use V-Picks?" If you don't like the chirp, you may have to make some small adjustments. But I have found the adjustments I have made thus far, has helped me to become a better player due to this. "Why should I have to adjust my playing style?". Whether you realize this or not, we adjust our playing with EVERY pick we use, to some degree.

Most of us play with our pick at an angle. We do this to create less resistance. It is easier to push a rounded corner over a string than it is to push a flat, more abrupt edge. Therefore, we turn the pick, ever so slightly to accomplish less resistance. Some us us angle our pick in a downward fashion and some of us, me included, angle it in an upward style. I do this because I get much more mid-range response and because my hand is much more relaxed than the other, more popular method. But what I am about to propose to you is this; we do not need to angle our picks nearly as much when we are playing with a thicker pick that is beveled correctly! The reason is this, the "longer point of release" accomplishes the same goal of less resistance against the string. Therefore, you can play faster with a thick pick held horizontally to the strings than you can a thinner pick without the bigger, longer bevel. Am I making any sense? In the 80's I worked in quite a few country bands and did a lot of Chickin' Pickin' or what is also called Flat Pickin'. To to this, you need a lot of pick slap and you need the string to really release in a very hard action. This is how you get that sound out of a Tele. If you angle your pick too much, and sometimes at all, it just does not accomplish this. I said this to say, I can play at most any pick angle, but I am more comfortable playing in the manner of angling the pick up. However, since playing with my V-Picks for some years now, I have found my pick angle to be very little, if any at all most of the time. I still get that fast action because of the bevel, however, I get very little pick noise.

Believe it or not, the very reason I started playing with thick materials back in '85 was to sound like two certain artists, Brian May from Queen and Ed King from Lynyrd Skynyrd. They both had a lot of pick "noise". We later learned that BHM played with a sixpence coin, of course, and most do not know this but Ed King played the solo from Sweet Home Alabama with a seashell! This same "chirp" noise is all over that LS song. I loved to hear these two players because they sounded different. Not just their tone but their attack. Just like each one of us speaks differently. We all have a different way of saying our consonants and vowels. Our voices are not made up of the tone from our vocal chords only, but the shape of our mouths, teeth, lips, etc. These things all make up our speaking style. So it is with our picking style. And so it is with these two artists that I love to hear so much, still to this day. So, I set out to create a pick with as much noise as I could muster up. Wood, metal, plastic, rubber. It didn't matter to me what I used. I even left the picks I made unpolished to accomplish this scratching sound because I loved it that much. And guess what, IT WORKED. I also got my own sound and style from it. Now, over the years, I have come to understand that not everyone wants this effect. Some do and some don't. Therefore, I polish the V-Picks to a sheen like a mirror. This reduces this noise/reaction to it's minimal state. A lot of thick picks out on the market today do not even trim off the mold seam around the pick. You get the pick, take it home, play it for about 5 hours before you get the edges completely worn down to where they should have been when you bought it brand new. However, this takes time to do this on every pick and is not cost efficient to do so for a lot of big companies. That is why V-Picks are still hand done. Every pick that goes out of this place is ready to play. No break in period for these guys!

So now, for the meat of this discussion. How to get rid of the chirp. Simply hold your pick with less angle and give the string just a bit less pick. Or, if you like, angle it in an upward fashion like I do. Also, avoid placing your pick on the string when it is vibrating. This is not as hard as it sounds. It just takes a bit of consentration on your right hand. I have watched players for years looking at their right hands, practicing and developing their picking technique. It just takes some dicipline and practice, but not a lot. If you think about it, most of us work real hard on our fretting hands. When we watch our favorite players, do we watch their picking hand or their fretting hand? I say, we should be watching both. The fretting is only 50% of guitar playing. I believe we tend to pay far too little attention to our picking hand, in general. Anyway, to rid yourself of this "chirp", it is easily done by changing your pick angle. The less angle you put on your V-Pick, the less chirp you will get. Just for fun, try flat-pickin' with one of our picks sometime. You will love the tone you will get by doing this.

Now, another piece of good news for you. If you have tried V-Picks a year or so ago and did not like them, a lot of research and designing has been done since then. The new V-Picks have much less of the noise in question. And now, the new V-Pick Screamer has been thrilling the socks off of the most skeptical players out there. I have had many customers say that they can turn and manipulate the angle with the Screamer to give their playing different colors and textures. So, the new V-Picks are very impressive, if I do say so myself.

For a small example of the principles I have listed above, please view this short video posted on our website. It is a very primitive video, shot with a small digital camera in my living room. However, it does show how to eliminate unwanted noise created by using any thick pick. http://www.v-picks.com/SessionOne.html

Well, thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you play V-Picks, I want to tell you Thank You Very Much! I you have never played a V-Pick, I would like to invite you to do so. We have been working hard to get them into stores in every city of America and internationally as well. If you have tried a V-Pick years ago and just did not like them and thought of them as problematic, then I ask you to give them one more try. The new V-Picks are better than ever and the Screamer will knock you out! It is my promise to you that I have done my best, and will continue to do my best to help you to become the artist you were destined to be. I will continue to listen to guitar players and search their minds for any need they may have that may be keeping them from attaining that goal they are working so hard to reach. It is also my job to get you into the correct guitar pick for you. We now have over 20 models of V-Picks to choose from! That is a lot of picks, indeed! So, if you have ever tried a V-Pick and thought it is not for you, then I say, you simply did not play the correct V-Pick for you. I challenge you to try another model. Email me or call me anytime. I love to talk about tone, amps, guitars, techniques, and yes, guitar picks!

Vinni Smith

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