Raptor Picks Spotlight

This week I'm checking out the British made Raptor Picks. These are tri-corner plectrums, with each individual edge providing a unique feel and tone. Made of moulded high-grade acrylic, these picks are designed to offer something for every type of player, and I must say I found playing with them quite inspiring.

Here's the video demonstration of Raptor Picks - let me know if you enjoy this style of video, or if you have any tips and advise for future videos.

As you can hear in the video, each corner of the pick has a very different tone. The rounded corner, for example, has very little friction on the string, giving a very soft attack. The tone of this corner is also more mellow, a feature which works well on rhythm playing, and so I used it when recording the loop which I improvised over.

The pointed corner of the pick gives a brighter tone with a lot more attack, great for cutting through in a full band mix for solos. I also enjoyed using this pick for clean, picked rhythm parts, but found it too harsh for strumming in general. The medium corner makes a great compromise of the two, giving a usable tone with a nice warms and retaining a good attack and level of brightness.

The shape of these picks mean that they feel very odd in your hands for the first little while of playing. The middle of the pick has a more bumpy material, but I found that the pick was moving around a bit more between the fingers than I'm used to. This aspect probably makes it easier for rotating the pick to a different picking corner, but in general I found this a bit annoying.

I think these picks would make a great plectrum for someone who enjoys playing at home, perhaps soloing over backing tracks or guitar loops as I did in the video. You have three usable yet distinctive tones available without changing anything on your guitar or effects. Personally I wouldn't use this pick at a gig - I prefer to stick with a plectrum that will be consistent, as I wouldn't want to accidentally be playing on one corner of the pick when in fact I wanted to play on the other corner, it just adds something else to think about. However, as with all the picks I review, I'm sure there's someone out there who uses these picks, or other tri-corner plectrums, to achieve great results. If that's you, let me know in the comments! What type of music do you play with these picks, and why do you enjoy using them?

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