Review of Pointless Picks for Guitarists

The name of the company is Completely Oblivious, Inc. The product, Pointless Picks. I came across the owner of this company, Doug Larson, by chance. He turned me onto a few of his picks saying “try 'em out and tell me what your think”, and I did just that.

Before I get to my review of Pointless Picks I want to tell you a little bit about Doug Larson. I called him after we exchanged a few emails. Doug came up with the idea for Pointless Picks from watching other performers play with the back side of their pick and from using many different types of round things to pick the strings on their guitars. Having an engineering back ground and about 30 years of guitar performing experience, Doug headed to his workshop in his barn and went to work developing the Pointless Pick. After about 5 years and dozens of trials and errors Pointless Picks were developed. The patented picks were launched at The Summer NAAM of 2007 where they won a best in show award.

Doug's mind never stops. The picks are made out of acetal which is a plastic resin. I asked him about different textures for the picks and he said he is looking to try and develop a cross hatch type of pattern to increase the grip of the pick in the future. He is also developing some new sizes of picks. So a smaller diameter pick is coming as well as a new product that he is developing for guitarist. I begged Doug to tell me about it. He really didn't want to say anything other than it will be the worlds most simply designed.....oh man that's all I can say. Doug did say when it's ready to be released The Rock House Blog readers would be one of the first to know.

Doug says the best thing about his pick is that “basically with no point to rotate, you can concentrate on your music and when you can concentrate on the music you give a better performance for your audience”.

REVIEW

I have to admit I was kind of excited to try these picks out. I've messed around with all kinds of things to pick with over the years such as coins, rings, skippin' stones, credit cards, pieces of shell and probably a few things that I shouldn't mention here. But, I had never tried a Pointless Pick. The picks come in 3 colors. Red is a .58 mm thick pick, Green is 72 mm thick and Blue is 1.0 mm thick. I could tell right away I was going to like these picks. I have turned a pick around on many occasions and used the smoother round edge of it (ala Leo Nocenteli) and the Pointless Pick was just like that only you didn't have to worry about it spinning out of your fingers or having to adjust it between your fingers while playing. The reason is because of a cool raised circle in the middle of the pick on each side that your thumb and index finger fit into giving you a nifty little grip for the pick.

I grabbed the red .58 mm pick and strapped on my acoustic guitar. I strummed a few chords and played a blues rhythm in E. Strumming was effortless, picking took a little time with the new pick but it came eventually. I feel it was pretty much just getting used to having something different in my fingers. I did notice that with the raised ridge in the center of the pick that the pick itself did not slip from my fingers and if it rotated like a standard pick can from time to time you sure couldn't tell. The tone that the pick produced was similar any other nylon pick. I used the blue 1.0 mm pick with my Telecaster. I put on a blues backing track from Rock House and played some licks using the Pointless Picks. Again the results were pretty much the same. The pick stayed in my hand, there was no rotation and tone produced with the pick itself was good.

I think that every guitarist should have an arsenal of “tools” available to them for different playing situations. I believe that Pointless Picks should be one of those weapons in your arsenal. They're now a part of mine.

You can buy a trial pack on the companies web site. 10 bucks gets you 9 picks, 3 of each gauge. For a limited time if you use promo code “pointless promo” you can get the trial pack for 8 bucks at www.pointlesspicks.com