All Things Lap Steel!

[dubkitty]

getting them properly adjusted is tricky. if you were sitting in the room with me i could show you in ten minutes, but i can't explain it with a wall of text. i use .016 metal fingerpicks and a National plastic thumbpick. the Nationals are the only thumbpicks i've tried that really work. most thumbpicks aren't heavy or stiff enough for steel applications. maybe you could find some guidance by Googling "fitting fingerpicks" or something like that. i suppose i could put mine on and take photos so you can see how i fitted them. would that help?

[Chankgeez]

I play with a thumbpick, but not fingerpicks.

Reason being is that I'm always playing lap style on electric, don't need 'em for volume and don't like the way they feel.

These are the picks I play with: https://pro-pik.com/products/propik-original-thumbpick

I've also been playing in GCEGCE.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Ah saw those when I was looking, seemed intriguing but just went for a set of dunlops to ease my toes in (.020", think the thumb is thicker). I love the finger picks, think I might try a plastic thumb pick because the metal one has no give so trying to play anything fast with it is quite jarring on my thumb. Maybe I'll get used to it.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Damn, I tried it numerous times but I just can't get along with these things. They feel just super weird and clumsy and I'm totally unable to control my fingers with them...

I acknowledge it's a function of me having no clue what I'm doing, but when I fiddled with finger/thumb picks for the lappie it never seemed like they were at the right angle. Which, again, implies I'm doing the "wrong" thing with my hand in the first place.

[dubkitty]

i recommend plastic thumbpicks. metal ones can be overly bright-sounding and are harder on the strings.