First up is the Clear XLs. Made from a blend of polycarbonate, this picks are translucent and come in a variety of colours based on the gauge of the pick. I'm going to try out the 1.14mm first. These picks have a recessed bowl shape as a thumb grip on the plectrum, helping the grip, which is useful as the material isn't the most grippy. For a fairly thin pick I was pleased with the brightness to the tone and the crisp attack. Moving through the gauges of picks to the thinnest, the brightness of the tone is retained, but the crisp attack turns into more of a scratchy pick noise on the strings, as is usually the case with thinner picks. It is apparent, however, that these are a higher quality thin pick than your 10-for-£1 music shop picks. I would recommend this picks to players who mainly strum, as complex articulated rhythms and lead parts don't come naturally with the amount of bend these picks have in them.
Next is the Clear XTs. These are very similar to the Clear XLs, however they have a later etched texture on the recessed grip. This helps with grip further. As far as I can tell, there is no tonal difference between these and the XLs. Unfortunately these picks don't come in the heavier 1.14mm gauge which I would have preferred, but if you liked the sound of the Clear XL picks I would recommend the Clear XT picks, as holding onto them without them slipping about is considerably easier!
Thirdly is the Nylon XT pick. These come in a gradient from white to black from thinnest gauge to thickest, and range from 0.4mm to 1mm in thickness. These picks are advertised as being preferable to aggressive hard-rock guitarists, and I can understand why. Tonally these picks exhibit less of the brightness of the clear picks, something which isn't always desirable in a full rock band mix. A brighter tone is on tap if you really dig into the strings, but in general there is a warmer, quieter sound using these picks. Unfortunately these picks have quite an audible attack on the strings, something which I'm not particularly keen on, however as with everything I'm sure some will enjoy that. The 0.4mm gauge pick was an interesting one for me, seeing as my custom v-pick is over 10 times thicker, and I found that using this pick was like having a hard limiter on my guitar - no matter how hard or soft I played the tone and volume was the same, just with varying scrapey noises - this ones definitely not for me!
Out of these three types of Wedgie Pick I preferred the Clear XTs - the brightness of tone from the Clear material paired with the extra grip from the lazer-etching made this the best of the bunch. I would like to see a thicker gauge of pick using this material, and interested to try it out and see how it compared. Part two of the Wedgie Picks spotlight takes a look at a couple of the Delrin pick models, and will be out soon!
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