Pointless Picks Review November 18th, 2008 . by MacNichol Pointless Picks debuted at Summer 2008 NAMM Show, winning a Best in Show Award. The picks are round, with raised grip rings in the center. The picks come in bright colors (easier to find if you drop one) and three different thicknesses - light (.58 mm), medium (.72 mm), and heavy (1.0 mm). They’re similar to rounded picks such as Golden Gate or Dawg Picks, but because of the circular shape, there’s more space that’s hitting the string. This leads to two advantages. First, for individual note picking and slow strumming, much greater volume. Indeed, I stacked up the 1.0 mm Pointless against a 2.0 mm Dunlop, and, the Pointless came out the volume winner. Second, you can slide the pick underneath the string and then lift the string up away from the guitar body, and then let the string snap back to get a touch of a snap to the sound. You can even move the string right up to the raised grip and get a little bit more leverage and snap. The disadvantage of the additional area hitting the string is that, although for playing individual notes at slow or medium speeds, the Pointless stands up well to other picks, for fast individual note playing, I frequently found the Pointless too bulky and found myself tripping up often. Granted, I’ve been playing with regular picks (pointed or rounded side) for nearly twenty years now, whereas I’ve had the Pointless Picks for a mere four months. Thus, it may just take some getting used to. Interestingly, when I did medium and fast strumming, the Pointless produced less volume. This was odd when I did a lot of runs mixed in with some strumming because the runs came out much louder yet the strumming much softer. I tested the .72 mm Pointless against a Dunlop nylon .73mm, and got much more balanced volume from the Dunlop. However, something that I like about Pointless Picks when doing light and medium strumming is that the strings’ notes meld into one wall of sound coming out from the guitar rather than a bunch of individual notes that happen to be played almost simultaneously. For rhythm playing, this could be beneficial. Another aspect that I found interesting is that because of the rounded and large space, I could “bounce” the pick up and down across the strings when doing medium or fast strumming, thus achieving either a volume increase on certain strings.  I also angled my hand downwards about 45 degrees to get a different, slightly more percussive sound. In short, light and medium strumming with a Pointless produce a much different sound from that of other picks. Posted in Accessories | Comments are closed.