Australian Bulloak Pick
When I first heard about these, I was admittedly rather incredulous about the prospect of a wooden pick. But after going to the Polarity Sound page, and checking out their offerings, I’m extremely intrigued. I’ve played with all sorts of picks made with different materials from milk-protein polymer to acrylic to high-velocity plastic to ceramic, etc. Can’t say that I’ve played anything made from wood, so this pick really makes me wonder.
They currently make a single style of pick that is similar in size to a Dunlop Jazz 3 – they call it the J3. And at first blush, you might think, “Ho-hum, just another pick,” but there are two things that distinguish this pick from others:
- The picks are made of extremely hard wood; either Lignum Vitae or Australian Bulloak
- The picks are magnetic. Yup, magnetic. They even come with a magnet that you can put on the inside of your guitar body, so you can place the pick when you’re not using it.
From what I could tell from the video, the picks produce a nice, chime-y, bright tone. I thought it would be a bit warmer, but given the hardness of the wood, it’s not too surprising. In any case, I’ll hopefully get one of these in for review, and I’ll let you know what I think of it, plus a bit more technical stuff in detail.
A question in my mind is: Just how durable are these picks? I’ll have to flesh that out once I play one, but chances are with the hardness of these woods, they’ll probably hold up for a long time and so long as you care for them properly. I imagine they’d be similar in durability to Red Bear picks (made from milk protein polymer).
Guitar Gear 
My first thought about a magnetic pick is that it might do some weird things to metal strings.
Yeah, same here, but when I saw the video, it didn’t seem to affect the strings.
I’ve played pick made from ebony and it felt very natural and I liked the sound.
That one felt even better than V-pick in terms of feel and tone, almost like playing with your fingers, if that makes sense.
I’ve ordered them just out curiosity when ordering some V-picks, that btw I got very curious about after seeing your posts here, Dawg. 🙂
Can’t comment on durability, since I don’t play that often, but worth a try.
On the note about magnet inside: i used coins instead of the pick out curiosity and some that are more magnetic definitely induce some additional overtones/sounds. Weather you like them or not, it would be up to you…
I’ll be giving one a while pretty soon, and we’ll see how it works. I always like the tone that natural material produces.