Sticking With A Winner
OK, you keep emailing me asking me to review my purchase, so I’ll do it. I recently ordered two Pro-Pik thumbpicks and 4 Pro-Pik fingerpicks. I’ve been playing guitar for almost 60 years, but picked up banjo 4 months ago as a tribute to my late big brother Bob, who had a beautiful Calico, and to my late friend Rick Storey, who played a lovely Gibson Earl Scruggs model. I was fortunate to acquire the latter, though I would’ve preferred my brother’s banjo for sentimental reasons, but it didn’t happen. Anyway, when I started learning banjo, I remembered a NAMM Show many years ago, at a time I was playing fingerstyle guitar almost exclusively but had broken my thumbnail right before the show. I forgot to bring a thumbpick with me and couldn’t find any vendor who’d give me one, but the guys in the ProPik booth offered to sell me a banjo thumbpick, so I bought it. It wasn’t great for guitar, but it looked cool so I hung on to it. I dug it out when I first started learning banjo and discovered it was the perfect thumbpick for that. But after a couple months I misplaced it and couldn’t find it, so I went looking online for another. It was then I found out Deering had acquired ProPik and was selling their stuff online. I was also using Dunlop fingerpicks, and their only selling point was they were less uncomfortable than the National ones. So I ordered two thumbpicks, different size and shape from my original one, but the closest you had to offer, and some fingerpicks. A pricey endeavor, but good stuff doesn’t usually come cheap. The fingerpicks were a godsend, so much more comfortable and just as loud as the Dunlops, and the thumbpicks were very useful as well. I even loaned one to the banjo player in my band when he forgot to bring his to a recording session last week, and he loved it, too. So I highly recommend both the thumb- and fingerpicks you folks sell, and as if to make a happy ending happier, I found my original ProPik thumbpick and am picking merrily with it again. Thank you.
