New patent: string-doubling pick

Subject: RE: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 07:41 PM

Rick's got it right there with his bottom line. A quality it shares with any kind of amplification.

But how can you patent an idea that's been around for years? Or does this one in the New Scientist have some novel design feature? I had a look for the piece on

Subject: RE: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 12:40 PM

Yah, I bought one one of the commercially made ones and have designed a number of somewhat similar ones.

Bottom line is that if you actually know how to play, it can be an interesting effect. If you don't, it just makes you sound worse.

Rick

Subject: RE: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: Lady McMoo
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 11:08 AM

I don't this is a new idea...I've seen plectrums (plectra?) like these a long time ago.

mcmoo

Subject: RE: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 07:19 AM

Sounds like a slimmed down version of the Strummer produced by Jim Dunlop.

This multipick is designed to enhance any guitar playing-be it Funk, Blues, Rock, Country or Reggae. Created for all levels of guitar playing, it magnifies the quality of the sound. "I love the uniqueness and the sounds the Dunlop Strummer creates. This changes everything. Invention is not dead" - Richie Havens

It's on this Jim Dunlop page, and that's where the paragraph above comes from.

They look vicious, five plectra welded together, but they can be used quite delicately - you can play single notes so that they are heard, but without breaking strings, which you'd do all the time if you leant that hard on a string. Great fun for strumming. It's all too easy though to play much too loudly, so you have to be careful. I wouldn't be without one myself.

Subject: RE: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 03:37 AM

I've seen something like this used... and all it did, as far as I could tell was make the guy's playing even muddier...

Subject: New patent: string-doubling pick
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 03:32 AM

I read in last week's New Scientist mag about a patent obtained by a guitarist for a plectrum that's supposed to give the effect of doubling the strings. It sounds like two picks stuck together with a gap between the tips so that the string is plucked twice in quick succession, to imitate the efeect of two strings beiong plucked by one pick. The pieces said it would make a 6-string sound like a 12-string; well, it won't, of course: the four lower strings are tuned in octaves on a 12-string, as any fule kno. I suspect that it won't really sound like the strings are doubled anyway: I don't hear two separate 'plunks' on my mandolin; the distinctive sound comes from the sustain on the two strings, not the attack.

All the same, it might be interesting to hear. Any opinions?

Steve