MM, I would say, experiment with as many different styles of finger pick as you can afford to try. A lot of people find that one brand or style works best for them but there's no way to know what works for you without trying them.

For my zither and zither-harp I'm currently using: brass picks for the right hand fingers (they give a soft sweet sound and minimize clicking); a regular plastic thumb pick on the right hand; and some funny, rounded, downcurved plastic picks (that can't catch the strings) on the left thumb, which needs to strum chords right-to-left on the zither-harp.

I don't like to use these rounded "backwards" picks on my right hand because the sound is too muted and I use the right hand to pick out the tune.

There are picks with a "point" at the tip, which I like sometimes. In my case I need the pick to be as similar as possible to the "feel" of picking with my nails. And it mustn't extend far enough to catch the string if I move back down the strings too fast and don't lift my fingers quite enough. I'm starting to try sitar picks because they can't catch on the strings as I move from string to string. Not too good for guitar, though.

I'm sure you're going to get an awful lot of opinions on this!

Rita Ferrara