Vanishing Plectrums

Subject: Vanishing Plectrums
From: NormanD
Date: 17 May 09 - 06:36 AM

Where do they go? Is there a place called Pick Heaven? Is there any significance in the fact that they're vaguely gravestone shaped?

When you're in the music shop, you never just buy one, but possibly six. There are the ones that especially suit you, then there's a new shaped one you've not tried before, then a couple of bright colours to make them stand out more, so you give them a punt.

Give it a couple of weeks and you're back to scrabbling around, going through the pockets before you put your levis in the wash, looking through the case, looking accusingly at other players......

I have thought of keeping them all together in one neat little box or ornamented case, but if (or, more likely, when) you mislay that, then you're really buggered.

I know that you always end up with missing socks after the wash and dry. Perhaps, one day, all those missing socks will turn up, and in the bottom of every one there'll be a plectrum.

Norman

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 09 - 06:45 AM

Very true. I keep a "matchpik" book in each guitar and mandolin case, a selection of my favourites stuck with smurfshit inside the lid of my capo box, and some in every change pocket in every set of jeans - and a spare set of capos in a 12-string case and another the mandolin case.

I have still at least once turned up at a festival with no capos!

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Midchuck
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:13 AM

One of the advantages of living in a small village and doing a lot of my shopping at the small store just down the street (other than being insufferably "green" about not starting the car every time I need anything) is that the store staff pick up all the flatpicks that they find on the floor in front of the cashier's counter and give them to me. I get most of my own back, plus a few others.

P.

PS: Wouldn't the proper plural be "plectra?"

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:14 AM

Ah, I have very light fingerpicks for autoharp, and they squash like little bugs if they are left loose. One is usually TAPED to the harp itself with medical tape that I use to keep it stiuck well on my finger, just to keep it from squashiong. The adhesive makes a nasty mess on the metal part I stick it onto! (The cases I like best have no inner pocket, is the problem.)

I use a lot of Altoids in connection with our church work, and yesterday I made a steal-- 2 tins were on sale so cheap that for the first time, I bought them for the tins they come in and the mints will go in a ziploc for refilling!

And as far as your flat picks go, Altoids now makes a smaller tin for smaller mints-- that would fit the flat picks just great.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:19 AM

Smurfshit - ROFLMAO

Perhaps a ninja turtle is stealing them. Will the turtle be unbroken.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: NormanD
Date: 17 May 09 - 08:13 AM

Midchuck wrote: Wouldn't the proper plural be "plectra?"

Wikipedia says:
"Plectrum" has both a Latin-based plural, plectra (from Greek plural πλήκτρα) and a native English plural, plectrums. Plectra is used in formal writing, particularly in discussing the harpsichord as an instrument of classical music. However, plectrums is more common in ordinary speech. In vernacular speech the abbreviation "pleck" or "plec" (plural: plecks) is sometimes used.

I say: Who calls them "plecks"??

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Acorn4
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:00 AM

The law of plectrums:-

Whatever volour your plectrum, the pub carpet or floor will be the same colour.This appplies evenn for bright orange.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:33 AM

I usually buy them a dozen at a time. Each one lasts for just one gig as I throw the used plectrum into the adoring audience. You should see the dears scrabbling around and fighting each other, just to get hold of it...

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Alan Day
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:14 AM

Will
Been there seen it !!
Something that really annoys me is the person who gets up on stage ,opens up a little tin full of plectrums and then keeps the audience waiting whilst he/ she sorts through them looking for a suitable one.
Can this not be done prior to getting on stage?
Will has no problems he just asks the audience if he can borrow his back again.
Al

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Tig
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:31 AM

I've sorted it for some people!

I make earrings and chains with glow in the dark plectrums on them. These are medium weight standard plecs and if you drop them on the carpet in a dark area they DO actually glow a green colour so you stand a chance of finding them.

The fact that they come on a fine chain means you have one round your neck and don't have to go grovelling.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:54 AM

Oooh. I'll have a half dozen. Not that I lose plcks. i just like the whole jewelry them and glow in the dark is always good.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Darowyn
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:55 AM

Owing to a simple numerical misunderstanding, I bought six dozen (instead of six) of my favourite ones some years ago. It was at Music Live exhibition and they were very cheap.
Oddly enough, since then, I've never found it hard to find one.
There's one on every stringed instrument- even the violin, oddly, one on every flat surface in my music room, and several on the bedside table upstairs where I took them out of my pocket before putting my clothes in the wash basket.
If you own 72 plectrums, it becomes quite easy to find one.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:27 AM

I think I know the answer- there are thieves out there.

When a friend of mine retired to Sequim, Washington, from Juneau, Alaska some years ago he brought me a Mason jar FULL of plectrums. Don't tell me he BOUGHT them all.

I busied myself for two months handing them out and I STILL have a small bowl full.

I must admit that I have never gotten back my favo(u)rites so he evidently didn't get them all. There must be more thieves out there.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:56 AM

I've not purchased any new plectrums since about 1980;
and still have a few of that batch left [and some even older very well worn and rounded favourites]
which I still use and keep in the same vintage mid 70's 'Strepsils' tin
I started using in my mid-teens.

I rarely lose a plectrum, but have found enough of other guitarists lost strays
to have been kept sufficiently supplied for nearly 30 years..

..thanks for all the 'donations' guys !!!!!

[my mum's family lost their home and every possession
when they got bombed and evacuated in the Blitz,
so she brought me up to respect thriftyness
and not be too proud too pick up even the least valuable coins
and reusable items found lost and discarded in the street....]

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 May 09 - 12:09 PM

Wher have all the plectrums gone?
Long time passing ...............

Same place as biros

L in C

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 May 09 - 12:18 PM

Just buy only the ones made of plectranium. They will not only glow without any treatment but they will find their own way home. They come from Planet Plectraniac.

~S~

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,iancarterb
Date: 17 May 09 - 12:39 PM

I believe in all manner of conspiracies, and I think it's the Couch Association. I suggest finding a copy of Tom Hunter's 'My Washing Machine Eats Socks.' I rest my case.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Dave Illingworth
Date: 17 May 09 - 12:48 PM

A company called Dickies make a small canvas "pick-purse" that can be attached to the guitar strap.
Very useful, but I still forget to put picks back in there, so still lose them. I do find that the little "ticket-pocket" in the front right-hand pocket of jeans the best place.
When I was teaching in primary schools and going to a gig straight from work, I have on a couple of occasions forgotten my plectrums, so had to use one of the plastic coins the kids used in their maths
(money) lessons.........

As well as leaving behind picks, capos, leads (even a guitar stand, once), I sometime pick up other people's by mistake. Have been kindly lent a capo, and embarrassingly taken it away with me.
I did return it by post, though.
Then there is the stuff you leave behind at home before the gig - once my guitar, but remembered just in time to turn back home.
Once woke up one morning, not knowing where my guitar was from last night's gig - but the cause of that was no doubt Shepherd Neame
Mssterbrew Bitter.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 May 09 - 02:00 PM

Maybe there is a wormhole for plectra as there is for the socks.

It wasn't the missing socks that disturbed me. It was the ones I didn't recognise showing up in the finished wash.

Spooky.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,Greycap
Date: 17 May 09 - 02:41 PM

I suspect a rip in the time structure, same as the socks.
The plectra and other sock drift around either two or three minutes ahead, or behind, your real time, so you don't find 'em too often.
The rip occurs in washing machines and Levi pockets.....

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:04 PM

Tig really is making jewelry

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:11 PM

We'uns call em 'fingerpicks' or 'thumbpicks.' That way we don't have to worry about the plural.

In my house, they don't so much disappear so much as circulate, being mislaid and then re-appearing in a slow but inevitable progression.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Frozen Gin (inactive)
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:15 PM

The late Douglas Adams has already predicted that one day that rip in time will reverse itself and we'll all be buried in single socks and, now, it seems. plectrums.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:17 PM

I got my towel. I am ready.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Acorn4
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:32 PM

Perhaps they vanish down that same black hole as songwords!

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 May 09 - 05:56 PM

I play Middle Eastern and similar strings (ud, cumbus, cobza, Puerto Rican cuatro) and use the traditional kind of plectrum for those, a few inches long and cut out of a plastic soft drink bottle (or the plastic strapping used for packets of building materials, which I find work better for the louder instruments). If the instrument's sitting around out of its case I thread them through the strings near the nut.

I use to have a cat who thought they were cat toys. Every so often I'd hear a distinctive loud BOING and a scampering sound as Zeke would drag the plectrum out of the cumbus with his teeth and run off with it. A few months later I'd move a piece of furniture and find the very dead plectrum underneath it, curled up and dented with little toothmarks.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Alan Day
Date: 17 May 09 - 06:17 PM

Are they any good for Tiddlywinks?
Al

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,highlandman
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:35 PM

I've lost very few plectra -ums -whatevers; when I drop them they always leap into the sound hole of my guitar.
But since I converted to 99% fingerstyle I don't worry about it any more.
-G

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Zen
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:49 PM

Be thankful that you are not a bluegrass mandolin player. At this price I would have been bankrupted decades ago.

I also subscribe to the rift in space-time theory. Occasionally a plectrum or sock comes back through the rift and appears in my tin or drawer but it is never one of mine.

Zen

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Bobert
Date: 17 May 09 - 08:03 PM

Guess I should consider myself lucky... I have one Dunlop thinb pick, one Dunlop finger pick and one metal finger pick and I've been playin' with them going back, ahhhhhhh, maybe 30 years... It's all about making sure that yer stuff gets where it's supposed to be at the end of the gig, no matter how much pressure is being applied to you got get yer stuff off the stage for the next act...

Yer picks is like yer life long friends... Treat 'um like that...

B~

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Peace
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:00 PM

I received 50--yes, fifty--Fender flatpicks--medium hards last Christmas. I have two left and I've already had to buy about ten more. They walk. I put 'em down and don't recall where. People borrow 'em and that's that. Me--I lose 'em.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:10 PM

"Occasionally a plectrum or sock comes back through the rift and appears in my tin or drawer but it is never one of mine." Zen

lol Great line.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:20 PM

Even though I rarely play guitar I got a hint from a luthier friend. If you use soft flatpicks try cutting them out of plastic margarine or butter tubs. Make a hole in the centre of them so they don't slip out of your fingers as well. Or am I teaching granny the noble art of egg sucking?

DeG

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: JennieG
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:51 PM

Someone once gave me a plectratrum made of an outdated credit card, with a hole punched for threading on a keyring. My keyring is heavy with dangly keys and objects, I wouldn't like to use that on my guitar/s....I use fingernails for playing anyway.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:54 PM

Hey, PFR - you just proved you are middle class after all. "Purchased" - my oath! "Bought" would do...

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:10 PM

i've been off the cider since easter..

..tomorrow i will attempt to use the word 'transaction'

in the first shop I enter [sorry.. "go in"].......

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:11 PM

The classic 1958 SF short story "Or all the seas with oysters", by Avram Davidson, addresses a similar question: why do safety pins always disappear, and why do coat hangers magically appear in closets? There is a copy of the story on the web, apparently scanned using OCR (with some consequent minor errors) and most likely illegally posted, available here as of today, but perhaps not for long.

If the plectrum is the larval or pupal stage, then what larger, nominally inanimate object of a roughly similar form do we often find there to be a surplus of?

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,Peace
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:25 PM

This guy lost his, too.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Peace
Date: 17 May 09 - 11:51 PM

This one would be difficult to lose . . . .

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Gurney
Date: 18 May 09 - 01:03 AM

Long ago, when I was single, I was pairing my socks and found a pick in one sock!   Eerie!



No I don't! I keep them jammed in the strings above the nut, like everyone else!

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 18 May 09 - 01:20 AM

On all my guitars I have a little spring-loaded pick 'magazine' which affixes to the back of the peghead and which holds 7 of the little buggers.
The only thing I have to remember is to put the pick back in the 'magazine' when I'm finished with it.

I use Dunlop 73mm Sharpies, but I've recently started making my own from plastic magnetic hotel room keys. They work perfectly.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: GUEST,iancarterb
Date: 18 May 09 - 02:05 AM

I believe Gurney has found the intersection of the pix-sox continuum. Tom Hunter would have been proud of the scientific breakthrough occasioned by the comparison.:)
Carter

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 18 May 09 - 04:32 AM

Plectrum, shmectrum

Plectra, shmectra.

What's wrong with "flat pick" ?

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Sugwash
Date: 18 May 09 - 05:54 AM

For many years I've attached my picks to the shoulder of my guitar using Bluetack, I haven't lost many and, should I drop one mid pick, there's always a second ready at hand.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 May 09 - 07:31 AM

35mm Photographic film containers are a useful size to keep Thmb/finger picks and plectra in ! As are the plastic cases that the toys in choolate KinderEggs come in!

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:51 AM

"Occasionally a plectrum or sock comes back through the rift and appears in my tin or drawer but it is never one of mine."

Might one suggest that somewhere in this vast universe there exists a plethora of plectrums, in balance with the tin or sock drawer. Or maybe there is just a gigantic black hole. Take your pick!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: NormanD
Date: 18 May 09 - 09:04 AM

I noted in my first post the relationship between socks and lost picks (and even tea spoons could be added to that list). I switched to red socks for a while - loss is minimised, but style is compromised.

I tried a similar deal with coloured picks, ones that stand out. But they go just as fast.

I've been toying with the idea of false nails and superglue but, with my luck, the superglue would just vanish.

And speaking of teaspoons, there is that YouTube film of the South African guitarist fretting his guitar with a spoon in his mouth. I'm sure we've all seen it. I bet when he turns up to play, he gets his spoon out, sticks it in his mouth and.......bugger! No picks.

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 May 09 - 11:45 AM

Maybe there is a wormhole for plectra as there is for the socks.

Contrary to popular belief, socks do not "disappear." They mature to their adult form - bent up flimsy wire coat hangers - and go directly to your closet (or to wherever else you find/keep all of them).

(I think some one of my neighbors must mistreat his/her socks horribly and they've been coming to my house once they've matured enough to escape.)

John

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 09 - 01:16 PM

Unless of course you need a bit of wire coathanger to fasten things together, or a whole one to straighten to rescue a sock or plectrum from behind the wardrobe, or run speaker-wire under car carpet, in which case you will find the coathanges have mysteriously migrated and no-one saw them go.

Somewhere they are doing a polka with the hoe that I last used in the front garden and is now nowhere to be seen...

Although the DI box came back in through the front door and put itself back on the bookcase where it SHOULD have been and the box of B-band pickup parts crept back in through the conservatory and put itself back on the top of the other bookcase with the Cubase masters from the roecording studio...

Subject: RE: Vanishing Plectrums
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 May 09 - 02:07 PM

You flatpickers sure have it tough, continually losing picks and having to buy replacements (for a pittance apiece).

We fingerpickers who use thumb- and finger-picks have much greater incentive to take care not to lose the little tools of our trade. It takes time and effort to bend and shape a metal fingerpick to custom-fit one's own fingertip. Once such a pick's shape has been fine-tuned to perfection, you don't want to lose it.

I use two metal fingerpicks and a plastic thumbpick. The thumbpick is semi-disposable; they wear out and break at the point where they are most sharply bent within a few months, so it is necessary to always keep a couple of extras on hand.

The fingerpicks are something else altogether. I have one, fitted to my middle finger, which I've had since at least 1973. Somewhere along the line, I lost its mate which I had so carefully fit to my index finger; over the years, I've gone through several replacements, none of which have been quite satisfactory. (National modified the design sometime in the 1980s, widening the band that wraps around the finger.) My current index-finger-pick, a Dunlop, is the best I've had in a while, and I intend to keep it.

I keep my #1 set of picks in a small plastic aspirin bottle, and a few extras in the pickbox of my guitar case. I am uncharacteristically anal-retentive about that good set of three little implements, taking extra care to return them to their little bottle whenever they're not in use, even if only for a few minutes.

When I lose a fingerpick while playing, it almost always jumps inside the guitar via the soundhole. I'll usually fake my way through the rest of the song as a two-finger (thumb plus one) picker, then go through the embarrassing routine of trying to shake the pick out of the guitar's innards.

PS: To minimize the loss of picks via slippage off the fingers, I keep a little block of violin rosin to rub on the picks and fingertips before playing. I don't always do this at home, but whenever I'm playing out, I follow the ritual religiously. This is a tip I picked up from a long-ago Mudcat thread, and it works quite well.