Dane Ellis Allen wrote:if a pick is a plectrum then why is it a pick? what's a pick?
A guitar pick is a plectrum used for guitars. A pick is generally made of one uniform material; examples include plastic, nylon, rubber, felt, tortoiseshell, wood, metal, glass, tagua and stone. They are often shaped in an acute isosceles triangle with the two equal corners rounded and the third corner rounded to a lesser extent.
The use of a plectrum to play a stringed instrument has been in practice for thousands of years.[1] Feather quills were likely the first standardized plectra and became widely used until the late 19th century. At that point, the shift towards what would become the superior plectrum material took place; the outer shell casing of an Atlantic hawksbill sea turtle, which would colloquially be referred to as tortoiseshell.[2] Other alternatives had come and gone, but tortoiseshell provided the best combination of tonal sound and physical flexibility for plucking a taut string.[3] Prior to the 1920s most guitar players used thumb and finger picks (used for the banjo or mandolin) when looking for something to play their guitar with, but with the rise of musician Nick Lucas, the use of a flat “plectrum style guitar pick” became popular.[4]
There have been many innovations in the design of the guitar pick. Most of these were born out of the issue of guitar picks slipping and flying out of the hand of the player.[5] In 1896, a Cincinnati man (Frederick Wahl) affixed 2 rubber disks to either side of a mandolin pick, which made it the first popular solution to the problem.[6] Over the next 2 decades more innovations would be made, such as corrugating the rounded surface of the pick or drilling a hole through the center in which the pad of a player’s thumb would fit.[7] A more notable improvement was attaching cork to the wide part of the pick, a solution first patented by Richard Carpenter and Thomas Towner of Oakland in 1917.[8] Some of these new designs made picks undesirably expensive. Eventually pickers would realize that all they needed was something to sink their fingerprints into so the pick wouldn't go airborne, such as a high relief imprinted logo. Celluloid was a material on which this could be done very well.[9]
Tony D’Andrea was the one of the first people to use celluloid to produce and sell guitar picks. In 1902 he came upon a sidewalk sale offering some sheets of tortoise shell colored cellulose nitrate plastic and dies, and eventually he would discover that the small pieces of celluloid he punched out with the dies were ideal for picking stringed instruments.[10] From the 1920s through the 1950s, D’Andrea Manufacturing would dominate the world’s international pick market, providing to major businesses such as Gibson, Fender, and Martin.[11] One of the main reasons celluloid was so popular as guitar pick material was that it very closely imitated the sound and flexibility of a tortoise shell guitar pick. The practice of using Hawksbill turtles for their shells would become illegal in 1963 as a provision of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), forcing musicians to find something else to pick with.[12]
Musicians had been partial to shell picks, and when D’Andrea provided an alternative, D’Andrea Manufacturing became very successful and gained renown as the guitar pick of choice through the 1960s.[13] Celluloid provided a good alternative in many ways. Tortoise shell was rare, expensive, and had a tendency to break. Celluloid was made from cellulose, one of the most abundant raw materials in the world, and nitrocellulose combined with camphor under heat and pressure produced celluloid. Though originally meant as a replacement for ivory billiard balls, celluloid began being used for many things for its flexibility, durability, and relative inexpensiveness, making it a natural candidate as a material for guitar picks.[14] Later, other materials, such as nylon and less popularly wood, glass, or metal would become popular for making guitar picks for their increased grip, flexibility, or tonal qualities.
A plectrum (pick) for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars and mandolins is typically a thin piece of plastic or other material shaped like a pointed teardrop or triangle. The size, shape and width may vary considerably. Thin items such as small coins, bread clips or broken compact discs and credit cards can be used as substitute plectra. Banjo and guitar players may wear a metal or plastic thumb pick mounted on a ring, and bluegrass banjo players often wear metal or plastic fingerpicks on their fingertips. Guitarists also use fingerpicks.
Guitar picks are made of a variety of materials, including celluloid, metal, and rarely other exotic materials such as turtle shell, but today delrin is the most common[citation needed]. For other instruments in the modern day most players use plastic plectra but a variety of other materials, including wood and felt (for use with the ukulele) are common. Guitarists in the rock, blues, jazz and bluegrass genres tend to use a plectrum, partly because the use of steel strings tends to wear out the fingernails quickly, and also because a plectrum provides a more 'focused' and 'aggressive' sound. Many guitarists also use the pick and the remaining right-hand fingers simultaneously to combine some advantages of flat picking and finger picking. This technique is called hybrid picking.
A plectrum of the guitar type is often called a pick (or a flatpick to distinguish it from fingerpicks).
Dunlop felt picks: http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Dunlop-8012-F ... B000EELBQE
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and I don't mind a bit if they are a bit chewed up. So I have a 
nyuk, nyuk.
