BlueChip Picks

About

A BlueChip pick changes the attack before it changes anything else. The composite these are machined from has a naturally low-friction surface, so the pick releases the string instead of grabbing it — less click on the front of the note, more of the instrument behind it. On a mandolin that shows up as a cleaner tremolo. On a dreadnought it is the difference between a percussive chop and a round, woody G-run. Wear is the other half of the story. These are machined and hand-finished rather than stamped, and a player who goes through a nylon pick every few weeks will often run the same BlueChip for years. At $40 to $45, the math works out in the player's favor inside a single season. The Acoustic Shoppe carries the full BlueChip line — flatpicks and thumbpicks, in gauges from 35 to 60 thousandths of an inch — including the TAD55-3R , a three-rounded-corner TAD developed with TAS co-owner John Chapman and available nowhere else.