Re: Triangular Guitar picks

["Jim Shepherd" <jmshepherd@hushmail.com>]

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Simon,

Congrats on finding a Herdim, those things are rarer than hen's
teeth!
15 Euros? Ouch!

Like many others who've participated in GC, I resorted to
making/modding my own picks. Mine start off as 1mm+ thick Jim
Dunlop or Steve Clayton rounded triangles which I cut down to size.
I've used white acetal/acetyl, and gold ultem/ultex materials and
both work pretty well. I aquired an old, well used Herdim from a
dear friend and fellow crafty which served as the model for mine. I
measured the thickness of the Herdim at several points with a
digital caliper and I arrived at a > 1mm average thickness. (anal?
me? nah!)

I buy them in bulk bags. All you need to do is draw a line
connecting each point on the pick with a fine point marker and a
straight-edge, then remove the material outside of the line by
cutting and sanding.

I've found that using an hobby or box knife to score the picks on
the outer side of the maker line, then snapping off the material (I
use a pair of wide pliers for this) and finally sanding the edges
with 400 and 600 grit wet/dry (dry) sandpaper to the line gets it
done quickly with as little dust as possible. I get a nice sharp
point this way. It's also much safer than trying to "whittle" the
material off. That's a good way to cut yourself badly.

It takes some time and effort, but given the sparse to non-existent
availability of the original crafty pick, and the utter lack of
interest from manufacturers to meet this need, the only practical
solution is to hack 'em!

The ultem/ultex picks feel most like the Herdim to my hand, but
YMMV.

Cheers,

Jim


On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:36:01 -0500 RPGfreak@web.de wrote:
>Hi,
>I got my hand on a Herdim triangular guitar pick (the ones with
>very sharp edges, not like the triangular ones that can be bought
>today). The only source I have found to buy these Herdim's is Tone
>Toys, they offer them for 15 Euro a piece which is too much in my
>opinion. Are there any alternatives out there? On my research on
>the Internet i read something about picks made by Hiroshi Iketani,
>where can those be bought? Sorry to ask this here, but this is the
>only forum I know with reasonably guitar players.
>
>Thanks, Simon
>
>
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