Regarding Pete's use of finger picks, there's a section in his How to Play the 5 String Banjo that implies (or perhaps says outright -- the book is at home and I'm currently not) that he used them for the index, middle, and ring fingers on his right hand. Nothing on the thumb or pinkie fingers, though.

He used a variant of traditional frailing as well as the up-pick bum-diddy, but when he frailed he used the back of the nail on his middle finger rather than the index finger.