1- What is a Guitar Pick Variety Pack

 A Guitar Pick Variety Pack is a set of at least three different guitar picks aimed to contain different shapes, sizes, materials, or thicknesses of plectrums. 

There are other common names for this type of guitar pick set, like “Try out Mix,” “Guitar Pick Mix Set,” or “Guitar Pick Box.” Some variety packs are focused on specific guitar areas like a “Heavy Gauge Variety Pack,” thought to be used by advanced players or “Beginner’s Variety Pack” containing medium and thin guitar picks.

On guitar picks, qualities like thickness, shape, size, and material play a pivotal role in the guitar tone, sustain, grip, or pick noise.

Therefore, it is not only about the personal preferences of the player but also about the techniques you want to develop. Your hands do an arduous job, give them the proper tools they need.

2- Reasons why a Variety Pack is a good idea

REASON ONE - It is the fastest and cheapest way of changing your guitar tone

Think about it: The guitar, strings, amp, cable, and effects pedals are all pieces of the guitar gear that play a role in tone. Surprise: guitar picks too!

Use a rounded thick nylon pick and you’ll get mellower, darker, and thicker tones. Use a pointy medium Tortex guitar pick and your tone will be as bright as you can imagine.

It only takes two seconds and the cost of a coffee to change your pick and increase your tone spectrum. Larger tone repertoire means larger versatility.

Music is about staying dynamic, and monotony kills dynamics. Therefore, your most logical step as a guitarist is to find ways of expanding your repertoire of tones and techniques. This happens with practice and the right guitar gear.

REASON TWO - The joy of exploration

Music theory, speed exercises, precision exercises, and warm-ups all have one thing in common: They focus on improvement, repetition, and perfection.

However, performance is not everything and sometimes we should focus on the joy of exploration.

The greatest ideas happen when we achieve a “flow” state, also known as the “zone.” This applies to guitar too! So, why not relax for a day, test some new pieces of gear, spark some creativity by playing around some guitar phrases, and then see what happens without planning too much and having the pressure of achieving one specific performance milestone?

Chose 4-5 different picks, turn on the amp, and give yourself a two hours break by enjoying the music you are playing now.

PS: Don’t forget to turn off your phone!

REASON THREE - Develop specific skills

Try to perform your speed exercise with a large, worn-out, thin guitar pick. Let’s say 0.35 mm.

You will face one of these three scenarios:

• You are slower than usual.
• You are as fast as usual but your technique is bad.
• You are slower and your technique is bad.

As in every discipline, using the right tools is the key to success.

“Modern Guitars” are attributed to Spanish musician, Antonio de Torres Jurado. He was a luthier, and in the mid-1800s, he began creating the style of guitar that would rise to all modern guitars.

Imagine then how immense the number of available guitar techniques that had more than a dozen decades to be developed is. From strumming to hybrid picking, palm mute, sweep picking, or down picking, all these techniques have different requirements, and different requirements can be fulfilled with different tools.

In our article, “7 essential guitar pick techniques,” we have summarized some of the most common techniques.

REASON FOUR - Different instruments

Sure, the average guitar player owns a red Stratocaster with 09 strings and plays classic rock.

But what about the rest of us? The 7 strings shredders, the acoustic unplugged fans, the indie effect experts, the experimental music lovers, the metal-heads, the bassists using picks, and the jazz/bossa relaxed musicians out there?

We all deserve to have a choice according to our requirements.

Personally, I like to play bass with a medium pick (Rombo Prisma), and I love the warm tones of Rombo Horizon for guitar reverb phrases on my telecaster. However, when I feel like using the thickest metal distortion ever, I choose Rombo Diamond.

Different guitar pick shapes, sizes, materials, and thicknesses create a widely broad tonality and usability ranges that I need to keep my motivation up!

REASON FIVE - A fresh input kills routine!

Did you use the same guitar pick for the last 20 years? Well, it’s never too late to get a little bit of fresh air and try something new.

Even the riff you have played 1000 times will sound different and you might notice that there are some nuances on “pick feedback” that can make your sound more fun and interesting.

What is the worst that can happen? In the worst case, you will discover a guitar pick that you prefer more than your usual! Go take that risk :-)

REASON SIX - A Guitar Pick Variety Pack is a great gift

Guitar players have a lot of things going on in their heads: the next gig, one unfinished song composition they started some weeks ago, the speed rates of their last practice, and more.

A Guitar Pick Variety Pack is a great gift for beginners, intermediate, or advanced players. Guitarists love trying new gear because it is a way to spark some creativity and explore tonalities.

A variety pack is a super affordable option for a small, but elegant gift to make a guitarist smile and feel excited for the next practice day.

There are many different gift options from Rombo:

• Guitar Pick Variety Pack
• Guitar Pick Gift Box
• Guitar Pick Variety Bundle

If only one of the guitar picks is chosen as the new favorite one, your friend will be thankful for life!

REASON SEVEN - Reflecting on your guitar tone and level

Even if you don’t like the picks included in the variety pack, they will have a positive effect on your playing.

You will reflect and confirm why you had chosen your current pick in the past and what the advantages of it are. You will reflect on your guitar tone and the nuances of guitar pick feedback and pick noise.

These experiences accumulate, and after years of exploration, you start having a sixth sense of “feeling” your instrument, your preferences, and music in general.

What do you do with your new picks? Well, if you don’t like them, give them to a friend that could need inspiration!

3- Who can profit from Guitar Pick Variety Packs (Spoiler: Everyone)

From the reasons above, we can take away a clear lesson: It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or an advanced player, the advantages of trying a Guitar Pick Variety Pack are always there.

Why beginners profit from Guitar Pick Variety Packs:

• Develop new skills.
• Develop a sense of exploration and identify tone nuances.
• Understand that different techniques need different requirements.
• Understand that the guitar path is a long one and that not everything is performance.

Why intermediate and advanced players profit from guitar pick variety packs:

• Expand the spectrum of techniques.
• Discover an unexpected tonality change.
• Focus on one specific technique.
• Joy of exploration.

4- Examples of a guitar pick variety pack

One example is our own guitar pick variety pack containing:

- 1 Rombo Classic | 0.45 mm

- 1 Rombo Origami | 0.75 mm

- 1 Rombo Prisma | 0.8 mm

- 1 Rombo Crisp | 1 mm

- 1 Rombo Waves | 1.25 mm

- 1 Rombo Horizon | 1.4 mm

- 1 Rombo Diamond | 2 mm

- 1 Rombo Jade | 2.3 mm

It is not only thickness that is everything. In order to make these picks more understandable for you, we have created four metrics: Attack, Flexibility, Tone, and Techniques. Here an example:

With this information, and in combination with the description of the pick and the technical drawing, we give you a very precise picture of the qualities of our guitar picks.

We also have a specific set for beginners with the “Beginners Guitar Pick Gift Box”:

And a specific set for intermediate/advanced players.

5- Conclusion

A Variety Pack is not only an excellent gift for your musician friends, but also for yourself if you are looking to explore tones, develop specific skills, or just need fresh air and try new guitar gear.

Different qualities like shape, thickness, or material, make guitar picks very different tools for different requirements. You will learn a lot in the process of testing them and every fresh input can help keep your motivation at the highest level.

The worst case: You will discover your new favorite pick!

Thin guitar picks vs. thick guitar picks. This eternal battle has been a part of every guitarist's conversation for decades. It is time to finally evaluate both alternatives in depth.

The thickness of a guitar pick is generally measured in millimeters, and it is an attribute that influences many physical aspects like tone and flexibility. For most players, this is considered the most important attribute when choosing the right guitar pick. 

However, after doing some online research, nobody seemed to really know how thick a guitar pick needs to be to be considered as a thick or heavy guitar pick. Where is the line?

Therefore, the first thing we did was to create a big online survey on our Instagram guitar community.

1- What are considered Thick Guitar Picks? Thoughts from the Guitar Community

The survey we created was online for 24 hours on an Instagram story and the participants were asked to answer two simple questions.

Personal preferences - thick picks or thin picks?

This question was the first one, and its aim was to see if guitar players prefer thick or thin guitar picks. Here are the results:

It seems that over two thirds of the guitar players prefer guitar picks considered as thick. Honestly, I thought there would be a 50-50 relation and this surprised me a lot.

What do you consider as a thick guitar pick?

This was the second question, and the guitar players could select different thicknesses they considered to be the “least thickness needed for a guitar pick to be considered as thick or heavy”.

The results showed that on average, a pick must be at least about 1.0 mm to be considered as a thick guitar pick.

These results are very interesting, since the information we found during the research claimed that a pick is considered as “thick” or “heavy” if it surpasses 0.8 mm thickness. We did not find any study or survey with more participants than ours.

Of course, we have to consider that we do not have any way to track more specific characteristics of the participants like skill level, music preferences, guitar type, age, and so on.

Average thickness of guitar picks over time

Additional research on this topic showed that during the past decades, the average thickness of the guitar picks has increased substantially. Thin guitar picks are even considered as vintage by many players due to the tone they produce.

This is no surprise, given that most modern guitar techniques and effects that require thick picks (like shredding) were non-existent during the 1950s and 1960s.

2- Why does guitar pick thickness matter?

The thickness of a guitar pick is one of the most influential attributes.

The guitar pick thickness influences:

• The flexibility of the pick
• The tone produced by the pick
• Volume and body of single notes
• The pick noise created by the pick
• The durability of the pick
• The control over the pick
• The feedback you will receive from the pick

A minimal change in the thickness of a guitar pick of only 0.2 millimeters (equal to two common paper sheets) is enough to change the properties of a guitar pick drastically.

3- Thick guitar picks vs. thin guitar picks:

Let's pretend there are no medium guitar picks and create a clear line that divides both thickness ranges, to make the differences between thick picks and thin picks more appreciable.

Thick picks: Summary

Thick guitar picks will provide mellower/darker tones. The common rounded edges that can be manufactured with thicknesses over 1 mm – combined with their rigidity –  increase the bass tones and the volume these guitar picks can provide, while reducing the pick noise the pick produces.

These picks provide more control over single notes and are usually the best option for lead guitarists.

Most advanced guitarists prefer thick picks, because in their guitar journey they develop new guitar techniques that can be performed better using this kind of picks. Thick plectrums provide more control when it comes to single notes and complex guitar pick techniques like pinch harmonics.

One of the biggest advantages of using heavy picks is the durability they provide. Nevertheless, the lifetime of a guitar pick is influenced by many other aspects, as we learnt in the article “Durability of a guitar pick”.

Thin picks: Summary

Thin picks are the best option for guitarists looking for brighter tones, especially using acoustic guitars and some strumming techniques on electric guitar.

The flexibility of these picks limits the maximum volume that can be achieved. This can be  an advantage because it works like an analog limiter. This is especially helpful in a studio session, where the maximum volume achieved must be controlled.

Most beginner guitar players start using thin picks because their guitar skill set at the beginning includes guitar techniques like strumming.

Note control can be difficult with thin guitar picks. However, some players use this attribute for specific guitar techniques, like in surf music, where a super fast tremolo picking is required.

4- Example of a thick guitar pick: Rombo Jade

Rombo Jade is the perfect example of a thick guitar pick. Thanks to its thickness, a very large bevel edge could be implemented to be as sharp as possible, providing the precision needed when using these kinds of picks.

The size is small, a typical attribute of thick guitar picks, and its shape ends with a very pointy guitar pick tip for maximum attack.

5- Example of a thin guitar pick: Rombo Classic

Rombo Classic is the thinnest Rombo guitar pick. In the middle, it is only 0.38 mm.

This guitar pick is extremely flexible and has a medium/large size with a standard 5 mm diameter guitar pick tip.

In spite of its thickness, the dynamic range of the pick is great. This is caused by the material used in our picks.

6- The right guitar pick thickness for you

I am sure you already have an idea of your favorite guitar pick thickness. In case you don’t, it is probably because you are at the beginning of your guitar journey.

Is there a wrong guitar pick thickness to play guitar? Any pick you use to get sound out of your guitar can work, if the sound produced is the sound you are looking for. It is entirely a matter of personal preference.
If you are a beginner guitar player, I recommend you start with something like 0.75 mm, as I described here: "Guitar Picks for Beginners"

However, if you are an intermediate player trying to find a way to discover new guitar tones, I do not have better advice than to tell you to try many different thicknesses and start integrating other important aspects of the guitar pick in your decision, like materials, size, shape, etc...

The good news is, you will probably end up having 3 to 5 favorite guitar picks which you can use for different techniques. So, enjoy the journey and be open to experimenting with different tones and textures with your guitar!

7- Current guitar pick thicknesses at Rombo:

For this chapter I included the new guitar picks, which will be officially released during 2021.

As you can see on the thickness scale, there are still some slots missing (for example something like 0.6 mm), we will be filling them in the future, as we design new guitar picks.

However, we might repeat thicknesses if other aspects change a lot, for example the shape, the sharpness of the tip, the size of the pick, or other grip textures.

8- Variable guitar pick thickness

Another important factor to consider is that some picks do not have constant thickness along its design. But why?

As we did our research back in 2018, we found out that designing guitar picks with variable thickness comes with many advantages.

Let's take Rombo Origami as an example: The guitar pick tip is 0.75, but its hold area is thicker. This simple change makes the pick produce darker and mellower tones without losing much of its flexibility.

In the case of Rombo Diamond, the middle area (where all vertices collide) the thickness goes up to 2.65 mm. We increased this area after experiencing that the relation between the thicknesses along the guitar pick also increases the control over the pick for single notes.

In addition, with more thickness on a given material, you have more possibilities to introduce design elements, like the 3D geometries we use in our picks. These geometries have two positive effects: on one side, they enhance the grip of the pick because of the tilted surfaces, and on the other side, the guitar picks look very cool!

In short, variable thickness will make your picks more versatile and give you extra control.

9- Conclusion

Thick picks vs. thin picks will remain a hot, trendy topic in the guitar community.

However, if you are already an intermediate player with some knowledge about equally important aspects of a guitar pick like shape or material, spread the word to avoid confusion among the newcomers.

We have already discussed the huge variety of different guitar picks you can find online in our article “Guitar picks online” since this can be overwhelming for some beginners.

The best advice I can give you: love both thin and thick picks and try to understand why they are different. Both need to exist in a world where creativity and different tones and styles are needed!

Now it’s your turn, what is your favorite guitar pick thickness?

This article was created because you asked for it. It is meant to be as transparent as possible, so that you can see who the faces behind Rombo are and how we organize this project internally.

We hope you enjoy it!

Rombo Guitar Picks: Short Introduction

Since 2019, Rombo has been researching surface finish and design in order to find the perfect balance between grip, ergonomics, and function in guitar picks and other guitar accessories. Rombo was born thanks to an amazing guitar player community whose aim is to continue this adventure and quest for the perfect guitar accessories.

Who are the faces behind Rombo Guitar Picks?

We are Judith and Carlos, a happily married couple trying to innovate in the world of guitar picks. We live near Stuttgart, Germany.

We both love music, guitars, product development, challenges, and attention to detail, so Rombo was the perfect excuse to mix all these things together and have some amazing adventures.

Our location in Remseck a.N., Germany

Packing and shipping of our guitar picks

From Remseck, near Stuttgart in Germany, we do almost everything.

Here, we receive the packaging and the dots we use to fix the guitar picks to the packaging. We try to be very organized and keep the place very tidy. Tidy places also look better for photographs!

In the shipping station, there is one tray for every guitar pick model. We also include a flyer and a “thank you”-card with every delivery. This way we make the experience more personal, while sharing our journey of packing your guitar picks directly with you!

We have a label printer, which is super useful, and thankfully our web system allows us to automate the printing for every customer and create a label with just one click.

Our post carrier receives the boxes from us with all the information they need to bring our products to you, including weight, countries, and import information for the customs.

We ship every order directly from our location.

The envelopes we use are not very cheap, but they protect the product well, they are made of 100% recycled paper and they are plastic free.

Always learning something new

We have to be very multifaceted to cover all the tasks we do, from idea generation, product development, graphic design, photography, web maintenance, logistics, social media, packaging development, and accounting, to all the stuff a start-up involves.

We believe that doing everything by ourselves gives us a very close perspective from the customer side.

This means, when you ask something on Instagram or Facebook, you receive an e-mail from us, or we answer your comment. It is us behind the screen typing every word and every smiley!

We love walking a lot. We go for a walk for 5 kilometres almost everyday. Almost every idea we applied to Rombo was created while having a walk. We called it our daily inspiration walk.

Rombo is a long journey

Two years ago, at the very beginning of this journey, we could not have imagined how many things we needed to learn!

We have encountered many challenges on the way; for example, I remember it was very difficult to find out how to sell internationally and establish a system that is fast enough for us.

I cannot tell how many books on startups, online marketing, Kickstarter or time management we have read! One of the most useful ones was A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community, by Jamey Stegmeier.

A funny anecdote is that Judith and I don’t have our own Instagram profiles. For the first post from Rombo, we had to check out a tutorial on Youtube to try to understand the process. I am glad to say that two years later, we have reached almost 20K followers!

PS: We still don’t have our own accounts, the one for Rombo is enough work! :)

Guitar picks: All about the design process

The most complex part is the design process of a guitar pick.

I like to sketch a lot, so I have lots of old ideas and sketches which I use as an inspiration source. Sometimes, we use questions to challenge the design process, like “Is it possible to create a guitar pick that is flexible and rigid at the same time?” While trying to answer this question, we came up with the idea of “variable thickness”, which has proven to substantially increase ergonomics.

Since we have an engineering & design background, we also do the modeling in 3D and product engineering. Every detail is important here to create high-quality products.

When we think the design is ready, we create some prototypes and send them to the testers. If you follow us on social media you will know some of the testers from our stories.

In total, we have about 30 guitar players that help us during this phase of the project and communicate with us which points they liked or didn’t like. Thanks to their feedback, we are able to improve areas of the guitar picks which we would otherwise not have thought of.

Manufacturing technologies

For the manufacturing of our guitar picks on a large scale, we use a technology called injection molding.

In this process, the melted raw material is injected into a mold with the negative shape of the guitar picks.

It is a very complex process with lots of engineering in it, the material has to be treated in a special way to keep the proper humidity, temperature and pressure, and to avoid external contaminations.

On the left, the injection mould from Rombo Diamond: Our polimer flows through the mould runner (yellow arrows) after it reaches over 270°C degrees and it is pushed forward. 

The red area is the area we use for the grip texture. The blue area is high mirror polished.

On the right: The first ever produced Rombo Origami from 30.11.2018. The first 50 guitar picks we produced were sent to guitar pick testers who gave us feedback about the material, the grip, the tone and the shape.

The raw material we use is produced in Italy. We have worked very closely with our material partner to accomplish every requirement we had, including the 100% recycled material of the EcoBlack sets. If you want to know more about the materials we are using, you can find more information HERE.

Packaging for guitar picks

We believe packaging is a very important aspect of a product. We not only use it to create an atmosphere and emphasize the quality of the product, but also to inform you about the attributes of our guitar picks.

This is the reason we created packaging with lots of printable areas to describe the guitar picks. We include our parameter bars, a short description of the guitar pick, the 6 special attributes of a Rombo guitar pick, and a QR-code with extra information.

We had a total of about 6 different concepts before we decided which one was the most suitable.

Right now, we are creating the packaging layouts for the new models that will launch in 2021. We have received some samples and they look great!

If you want to see the new models, you can click HERE.

Guitar picks and social media:

Rombo product photography:

Carlos takes the pictures for social media. We are not very skilled with the camera, but we have learned a couple of tricks and after thousands of trials, we are able to take decent pictures in our living room.

In our Instagram you can find the best pictures.

Educating the customer

You have probably noticed that our posts on Instagram are mainly informative. Guitar picks are often underrated and most guitar players don’t think much about it.

However, guitar picks are the loudest amplifier you can have in your hands and are the bridge between you and your guitar.

We try to pass the know-how we have obtained directly to you, so you can make conscious decisions about the products you purchase. Aspects like the variations on the tone depending on guitar pick thickness, or why are there so many guitar pick shapes and materials… And this is the reason we created our blog articles.

Our aim is to create a communication process that goes back and forth between us. Some of you have become friends of ours and have won a new perspective of thinking about guitar picks. 

Engagement of the community

“To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.” – François de La Rochefoucauld, essayist.

We believe we have one of the most engaged communities ever! We try to answer every comment and every private message, and we are sure we have an answer rate very close to 100%.

You all have participated in surveys, and you have left amazing comments and reviews. You post stories regularly and we have had very deep conversations with some of you! Thank you!

We also received great support from many amazing blogs like Heavy Repping, Gigs and Guitars, The Gadget Flow, Ultimate-Guitar, Guitar World, and others.

Rombo around the world

Rombo is expanding. We are working with dealers around the world and currently we have sellers in the following countries:

This means, with the help of our dealers we are able to sell in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, almost every country of South America, and South Africa.

Transparent communication with our dealers is a priority with us, and so far 100% of the new sellers stay with us! Together we are developing the brand and taking it to the next step.

The future of rombo:

During our inspiration walks, we talk about Rombo in the next few years. It is very difficult to imagine what the future will bring.

We would like to bring new designs (lots of them!), to increase the amount of recycled material for the manufacturing of the picks, or even be able to create colored recycled guitar picks. We want to talk more to our customers and share our experiences, and from time to time, share some great music and playlists.

We are only two people and every step takes its time. Some of you have written beautiful thank you letters to us or left very good reviews and we want to let you know that we are working hard everyday not to disappoint you :)

You are the best and you have a vote on the future of Rombo!

For most people, the thickness is one of the most important attributes of a guitar pick.

The thickness of a plectrum defines how dark or bright the tone becomes. It has an enormous impact on the feedback you directly receive from the guitar strings, and the control you have over the pick.

What is a guitar pick with a variable thickness?

It is a plectrum, whose body and tip have different material thicknesses (see the figure below).

They combine both aspects of thin and thick picks: comfort, рrесіѕіоn, rhуthm, and ѕрееd of рlау. You gradually gаіn flexibility іn thе mоvеmеnt оf уоur hаnd to рrоduсе a mоrе fluid gаmе and the desired ѕоundѕ that you imagine are realized.

Avoiding “flat” guitar picks and using guitar picks with variable thickness will offer several advantages for your playing style.

5 advantages of using a guitar pick with variable thickness:

• The solid and thick body of the plectrum gives you a better grip and control.
• By increasing the material thickness, the designers can create deeper and more complex 3D surfaces in this area of the guitar pick.
• A thinner tip will give you enough flexibility to achieve greater versatility when developing different guitar techniques.

• Increased bass when using thinner pick tips: The thicker body will create a darker sound, while you can still enjoy high treble caused by the thin attack area.

• The contrasting vibrations on the different areas of the guitar pick will create a new ergonomic experience.

Conclusion:

Variable thickness is one of the most uncommon features of guitar picks. Using these types of guitar picks for the first time might cause your fingers to have a short adaption phase, during which they will relearn how the physics of these picks behave.

At the end of the process, you will learn how to control a new type of gear and take advantage of the five points mentioned before.

There are many other attributes that can help you take your playing skills to the next level: Discover more in my article, 6 Underrated Features of a Guitar Pick.