Best Guitar Picks For Beginners & Older Adults

So you're just learning to play the guitar and you're wondering, what are the best guitar picks not only for beginners, but also maybe older adults. Because I work with a lot of older adults and acoustic versus electric, there are a number of different picks that you can use. So this is my container of picks. I'm going to put it on the close up here and you can see there's, there's, there's tons of picks in here. There's probably over a hundred picks in that container and they're all different shapes and sizes and materials. But I'm going to go over my top recommendations, my go tos, particularly for beginners and for older adults, especially if you have arthritis in your hands, I can give you some recommendations.

So I'm going to share my least favorite guitar pick first. And that is just the regular, like celluloid picks. They're very shiny, they're very smooth. Smooth. And you know, some people really, really like these. I don't particularly like them. I prefer something that has a rougher texture to it, only for grip. Okay. Because I know a lot of students, particularly beginners, they have issues with the pic just like the pic just like falling out of their hands. Okay. It happens all the time. So if you get something with a little bit of texture, that can be helpful. So these are typically the picks that I recommend for absolute beginners to. So this is a Dunlop Tortex pick. They're not completely smooth. They have just a little bit of roughness to them. And this is a thin pick. So this red one is 0.50 millimeters, and then this orange one is 0.60. So you can see they are very thin. Okay? And the great thing about this, this orange one is also very flexible and thin is because when you're a beginner, especially with strumming, this hand tends to be really, really stiff. So a lot of beginners, when they're strumming, their strumming starts by sounding off like this.

And they're like, lauren, my strumming sounds so bad compared to yours. Why? And part of the reason is you're just getting started. Your hand is really stiff, so you have to really work on relaxing the hand. But until you can do that, going to a lighter, more flexible pick will help because the pick is flexible. So this way your hand and your wrist and your arm, they're all going to be stiff. So the pick.

I'm playing with the same exact, I'm playing with the same exact tension and stiffness that I played with the last pick. But you can hear that the softer pick takes a bit of the curse out of the strumming. So as a beginner.

It can make you sound a lot better. Now the downsizes, you're going to hear the pick pick flopping around a lot more. Take a listen.

Because it's thin, so it's gonna slap between the strings. So eventually you're gonna want to graduate to what I think is a medium pick, which would be these ones here. These are the ones I tend to go to. So this is 0.77 and 0.88. Okay. So these are more your middle ground, medium sized pick. I think they're great for strumming. I really like the yellow one, the green one. If I'm doing like picking and strumming, I'll tend to gravitate towards the green one. And then for electric you could go with an even thicker pick. So These ones are 1 millimeter, 1.14 millimeters. And the reason for a thicker pick, especially if you're playing, you know, electric guitar and you're playing lead guitar, you don't want as much spring.

You don't want as much spring in your pick. So you want like a tighter pick. Also, you know, you're probably doing power chords and so your strumming is a lot tighter too. So I tend to like a thicker pick. The other thing that I really like, I'm going to show you my favorite for electric guitar. So these are called Jazz 3. This is the Tortex Jazz 3 pick and it's still a normal size pick. They do sell smaller size jazz threes. A lot of my guitar teachers love them. Actually. I got one right here. So you can see this one. I'm gonna put it over the top of this so you can see the size difference. So there's one and there's the other. So this black pick is much smaller. Some people really like these small size picks. I don't particularly. I still prefer the medium sized pick, but you can see they have much pointier top. So one's rounded here, this one's rounded. And then you'll see this one has more of a pointy top. And I like those for electric guitar, particularly if I'm playing lead. Now I talked about the roughness of the guitar pick already. Okay. So they have something called MaxGrip picks. So this is a Max grip pick by Dunlop. Okay. And I don't know if you can see it here. Maybe my editor put a close up over there. But it's like sandpaper so, again, a lot of my students, particularly older adults. One of my students told me this, and I didn't know this. As you age, I guess you lose some of the tactileness of your fingertips. They get. They get a little bit smoother with age. So, you know, it's more likely that the pick would fall out of your hand. Makes sense. Okay, so these Dunlop Max Grip picks, and they come in various thicknesses as well. Really, it's almost like sandpaper. So for I'm really, like, trying to pull this pick out of my hand, I can't pull that pick out. So it's more likely it's a little bit more tactile, a bit more grippy. More likely that it's going to stay in your hand instead of plopping and falling out on the floor. So Max Grip picks. And again, I'll put links to all of these in the description below if you want to go check them out. This is a great option and another great option that I recommend. Dunlop sells these variety packs. So this one is actually an acoustic pack. They sell electric packs, too. It comes with 12 picks. And there's a variety of different picks in here. I see one of the Max grips. There's a few Max Grips. I see some of the orange, the yellow, the green pick. So this would be more of like a medium pack. So you could try a bunch of different picks and see which one you like best, because it always comes down to personal preference. So I'm going to give you my thoughts and ideas and suggestions based on my experience as a teacher. But ultimately, you're gonna pick the pick that you like best. Couple more options for people, especially if you're having a tough time holding on. I have this. This is an asteroid pick. This is by Black Mountain Picks. And this has, you know, it's a little bit more fancy of a pick than you need, but what's really cool is these eyelets in the middle. Now, I don't have an example of another guitar pick, but there are guitar picks that just have holes in the middle. And some of my students like having these eyelets or holes in the middle again because they feel like they can hold on to the pick better, and it's less likely that they're going to fall on the ground. And my final one is going to be this pick here. This is also by Black Mountain Picks. Great company. This is a thumb pick. Okay, now you can see this thing's not falling on the floor, and I just. I just have a spring and it's clipped onto my finger. So the great thing about these is you can try and fling the thing off and it's, it's not going to fall. I'm really trying to get it off. They really hold on to your thumb. Now the great thing about this, now people think about this more with like finger picking but you can use this with stomach.

And I think it sounds fine. This is a thin pick so I wouldn't go with a medium or heavy pick for this. I would go for a thin pick if you're going to use it for strumming. But this is just a spring loaded back. Alright. Now this is great for my students who have arthritis, particularly in the thick. I have a lot of students that are like Lauren, it hurts to hold the pick because they've got arthritis in this thumb joint. So you put this little spring on it sits just above that knuckle and now you know you can hold it lightly. But even if I don't hold watch my close up, I'm not even gonna hold the pick.

I can strum the guitar and not hold the pick. I do recommend you at least use good form and get one finger on there.

But you are gonna get a great sound out of this pick and again it will eliminate the problem of the pick falling on the floor. But also if you're someone who's older that has arthritis and can't hold on to a pick, well, the spring does all the work for you. So another great option for beginners, particularly if you're an older adult that does have arthritis in your thumbs. Now some students are like Lauren, do I even have to use a pick at all? Do I need one of these picks? And yes, I recommend that you learn how to use a pick. But if you are interested in learning how to strum your guitar without a pick, I'll show you how to do that in that video right over there.