Ultex and Ultem: what's the difference?

[mattmoo]

I love the Dunlop Ultex picks. It's really all I use now.

There is a nice round response from it. I like the 1.14 thickness best.

[Charmed Life Picks]

I have yet to try either a Blue Chip or a Wegen guitar pick (although I do have three Wegen mandolin picks that I really like), but I gotta say, for the money, I love love love the Dunlop picks. Not sure exactly why. I ONLY like really stiff and hard picks -- have always been that way -- even though I don't play a lot of leads. I think it's because a really stiff and thick guitar pick doesn't flex or bend, so for me it's about precision, Wade -- precision and accuracy. In the Dunlop line I only use the 1.4mm and the 1.14.

These are excellent picks for not a lot of money.

BTW, Wade, we traded PMs a couple months ago, and you recommended I try John Pearse Resonator Lights on my Epi Masterbilt. I just strung it up last week and the strings really seem to like that guitar. Sounds and feels fantastic. Thanks!

[Wade Hampton]

Glad you like the strings.

As for the accuracy of stiffer picks, again, it's what a player gets used to and learns to use to his or her best advantage. I'm very accurate with the slightly flexible picks I prefer, but the advantage those offer me that rigid picks don't is that I can play chords with melody lines on top and get a good rhythm groove going at the same time.

I'm sure that there are people who can do that with a completely rigid pick, but I'm not one of them.

Another aspect of the medium-heavies that I love is that they are stiff enough to give me good tone, but flexible enough to make all that rhythm stuff a breeze. I can make them stiffer by gripping them closer to the edge, and turning them around and using one of the rounded corners (as I do on mandolin most of the time and baritone some of the time) is like going up a step from the flexibility I get with the point, essentially going from a medium-heavy with the point to a heavy with the rounded edges.

Anyway, part of what makes this fun is how we can get good results with so many different approaches.


whm

[Wade Hampton]

Okay, I've found one of my guitars that I like the Taylor Ultem picks on better than any of the others: I've got a maple Guild jumbo that I keep strung with John Pearse Pure Nickel strings. The Ultem material seems to bring something to the sound that wasn't there before, and on this guitar I like it.


whm

[Von Beerhofen]

The word Ultem sounds like something which just isn't quite there yet and I like the word Ultex much better. That sounds like a well researched object inducing high expectancy.
Still the word Nylon has a magical ring to it, so it became my final choice and I never was disappointed.
BTW, I've tried dozens if not hundreds of picks using different magical materials with fancy names, but not many passed the endurance test.

Ludwig

[Charmed Life Picks]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

I'm glad you revived the thread, Dave, because I received the Taylor Ultem picks a few days ago and have given them a try. One of the reasons I ordered them was that the Taylor Ultem mediums are .80, which is close to the .84 celluloid medium-heavies I normally use.

I wanted to see whether the Taylor Ultem mediums have the same slight amount of flex that I prefer.

I was correct about that - there's a bit of flex, not much, about the same as the D'Andrea Classic Celluloid medium-heavies that I use on everything and also very similar to the Blue Chip TD-35.

What I was less thrilled with was the tonal characteristics of the Taylor Ultems. They work and they're fine and all that, but I don't like the sound all that much, frankly.

What I have in the case pockets of the instruments I use the most are tiny ziplock bags with ten to twenty picks in them, mostly celluloid medium-heavies. But the white celluloid is a bit stiffer than the tortoiseshell celluloid, and I have a few heavies and other picks in those bags, as well. So I have some choices there, which I exercise depending on what tone and attack I want on any given song.

I think I'm going to divvy these Taylor Ultem picks up so that I have one in most of these little pick bags, so I have that tonal option should I so choose.

But it's not a sound I want on most of the music I play. Celluloid first and foremost and Blue Chip after that work better for me.

Many players feel that tortoiseshell picks are best. I used to use some genuine tortoiseshell picks, back in olden times when you could still find a few of them in the parts boxes at older music stores. I picked up some in Japan during the mid-1980's, as well.

As it happens, I was using a tortoiseshell pick when I won the US Mountain Dulcimer Championship in Winfield, Kansas, in 1980. But the one I used that day was one of the thinner tortoiseshell picks that had a bit of flex to it, yes, that was very similar to the flex that celluloid medium-heavies have.

The problem with those thinner tortoiseshell picks is that eventually all that I had broke. The thicker ones that bluegrass players favor nowadays won't break like that but feel as though I'm playing with a marble chip. The tone on those doesn't do all that much for me, either.

So for me the Holy Grail of tone in a flat pick is not tortoiseshell, however fashionable that might be. For me the best-sounding picks really are celluloid, because they have a sweetness to them that nothing else I've tried has ever matched, not even tortoiseshell.

So it's all a matter of personal taste, I know. (I'm not a big fan of Brazilian rosewood, either...) However heretical that might sound, that's what works best for me.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

Wade, thanks for your post. When you say "celluloid" could you please be more specific as to brand, name and thickness, or perhaps even paste a link into your next response. I'm getting a little confused here, since we've been mainly talking Ultex and Ultem in this thread. Is celluloid something different than these two materials?

I'm curious because I also tried real tortoise shell picks back in the eighties when they were still legal. I remember buying some from McCabe's when they were selling off the last of their stock after the new laws came in. I'm very glad they are protecting tortoises now. However, I LOVED the sound of those picks and have been searching -- unsuccessfully, alas -- for more than 20 years for a suitable replacement. I've heard that Blue Chip come closest, but haven't tried any yet. Perhaps the "ceulluloid" picks you mentioned are a good, cheap approximation?

I really love the Dunlop Ultex 1.14s and 1.40s -- really, really inexpensive and great cost-to-use ratio. They strike me as a really cool and together company. I called them with some questions and they sent me around 10 free picks w/o me even asking (and I'm usually the first in line for a freebie). Really nice folks, and a great line of products...

I've tried Wegen mandolin picks and noticed improved tone and playability right away, so that's what I now use. I just ordered my first Wegen Bluegrass guitar picks to give them a whirl.

I'm not a great picker and don't play a lot of leads, but I'm a tone chaser and prefer a thicker, stiffer pick for accuracy, since I do sometimes cross-pick.

Great Thread! My compliments to the OP.

P.S. I should mention that, like Wade, my real tortoise shell picks eventually got brittle and shattered after a few years. But it sure was fun while it lasted.

[Charmed Life Picks]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Glad you like the strings.

As for the accuracy of stiffer picks, again, it's what a player gets used to and learns to use to his or her best advantage. I'm very accurate with the slightly flexible picks I prefer, but the advantage those offer me that rigid picks don't is that I can play chords with melody lines on top and get a good rhythm groove going at the same time.

I'm sure that there are people who can do that with a completely rigid pick, but I'm not one of them.

Another aspect of the medium-heavies that I love is that they are stiff enough to give me good tone, but flexible enough to make all that rhythm stuff a breeze. I can make them stiffer by gripping them closer to the edge, and turning them around and using one of the rounded corners (as I do on mandolin most of the time and baritone some of the time) is like going up a step from the flexibility I get with the point, essentially going from a medium-heavy with the point to a heavy with the rounded edges.

Anyway, part of what makes this fun is how we can get good results with so many different approaches.


whm

Interesting you say that, Wade, cuz a buddy of mine I jam with regularly plays really LOUD and FORCEFUL leads and uses medium-light picks, never anything heavier. I don't know how he does it (other than the fact that he's a much better player than me).

This thread has opened my mind a little. I might actually experiment with thinner picks, since I mostly play to sing and am primarily a strummer, not a lead player.

[kydave]

Originally Posted by charmedlife417

Interesting you say that, Wade, cuz a buddy of mine I jam with regularly plays really LOUD and FORCEFUL leads and uses medium-light picks, never anything heavier. I don't know how he does it (other than the fact that he's a much better player than me).

This thread has opened my mind a little. I might actually experiment with thinner picks, since I mostly play to sing and am primarily a strummer, not a lead player.

What kind of guitar is he playing?

P.S. I have and use TS, and I have and use Blue Chips. I've got the Ultem/Ultex (as shown previously) and various gazillion other picks.

The Blue Chips are much closer to TS than celluloid.

[Charmed Life Picks]

Originally Posted by kydave

What kind of guitar is he playing?

P.S. I have and use TS, and I have and use Blue Chips. I've got the Ultem/Ultex (as shown previously) and various gazillion other picks.

The Blue Chips are much closer to TS than celluloid.

Okay, thanks, Dave, but I'm still trying to translate the terminology.

What, EXACTLY, are "celluloid" picks? Who makes them? What brand? What name? I'm looking for specifics here. If it's something I've not tried already, I'd like to give them a whirl. What pick, specifically, would I order, and where?

Is "celluloid" the same as Ultex or Ultem, or is it something entirely different? Perhaps it was mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread and I missed it.

BTW, he plays a really nice but really old Takamine cutaway steel string and he NEVER changes strings. Just a fantastic player and a great guy, my good buddy Marco.

[kydave]

Different materials entirely.

From Wiki:

Celluloids are a class of compounds created from nitrocellulose and camphor, with added dyes and other agents. Generally considered the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine in 1856[1] and as Xylonite in 1869, before being registered as Celluloid in 1870. Celluloid is easily molded and shaped, and it was first widely used as an ivory replacement. The main use was in movie and photography film industries, which used only celluloid films prior to acetate films that were introduced in the 1950s. Celluloid is highly flammable, difficult and expensive to produce and no longer widely used, although its most common uses today are in table tennis balls, musical instruments and guitar picks

Polyetherimide (PEI) is an amorphous, amber-to-transparent thermoplastic with characteristics similar to the related plastic PEEK. Relative to PEEK, PEI is cheaper, but is lower in impact strength and usable temperature. Ultem is a family of PEI products manufactured by SABIC as a result of acquiring the General Electric Plastics Division in 2007. Ultem resins are used in medical and chemical instrumentation due to their heat resistance, solvent resistance and flame resistance.

Polyoxymethylene (POM), also known as acetal,[1] polyacetal and polyformaldehyde, is an engineering thermoplastic used in precision parts requiring high stiffness, low friction and excellent dimensional stability. As with many other synthetic polymers, it is produced by different chemical firms with slightly different formulas and sold variously by such names as Delrin.

Celluloid pick:


Ultem/Ultex pick:


Delrin pick:

[warfrat73]

I haven't tried the Taylor version, but the Clayton Ultex 1.20mm standard teardrop has been my go to for years now.

I had been using the Dunlop Ultems be for that in 1.14mm. I don't find that much difference tonally. A bit different in articulation. The Claytons have a more angular edge, while the Dunlops are more rounded over. So it sounds to me like the Claytons pop a bit more coming off the string.

The big thing that sets them apart, for me, is (as somebody else mentioned) the Clayton teardrops are slightly bigger. I have pretty beefy hands, and substantial thumbs. After years playing mostly with Dunlop picks (Ultems, and Tortex before that), it never really bothered me until I had a chance to try the Claytons, and since then I feel cramped on a smaller pick. I've tried the triangular ones for the extra real estate, but just can't get used to those either.

Edit: I also have a few thick picks made of water buffalo horn. i really like the tone of those, and the feel when picking, but I find them hopeless for strumming or rhythm work.