This pick review is about the Pickslay Zebra wood pick. Pickslay Woodworking has its own page on Etsy here.
Deep in Africa are very pretty trees and fauna. The Pickslay Zebra Wood pick is not only beautiful, with striped grains, but it sounds quite nice. The tone when dropped on my table is a cross between a nickel and plexiglass being dropped. A good clack with some resonance to it and a touch of ring.
This wood is fairly hard and the grain is very tight except there is a little bit of grain slot (pores) similar to rosewood. In fact, this is kinda like rosewood in my mind, except it has a tighter grain slot texture.
The Tone of the Pickslay Zebra Wood Pick:
There is a slight bit of grind to the stroke on the strings and I play, it’s great with humbuckers. There is some warmth and assertiveness also. The differences between some of the middle hardness woods are very subtle, but suffice it to say that this can work with hard rock and metal, and at the same time, with, say, a semi-acoustic 12-string, you’d have quite a sound!
The tone you hear (and feel) is reminiscent of an African drumbeat so apropos. If you’ve ever listened to native North African stringed instruments, you will have an idea of the sound. It’s great and resolute, deep, and can be soft also.
The Specs:
| Material | Attack Tone | Decay Tone |
| African Zebra Wood or Zebrano | Rich and thick | Sandy and deep |
| Durability/Wear | Comments /Dimensions | Shape |
| The middle range for various kinds of wood | Janka hardness of 1,800 Lbs. | Based upon Std. 351 |
| Grip and Feel | Flexibility | Likely Use |
| Lightly Porous nature improves grip divots improve grip also | Not Flexible | Metal, Electric Jazz, Country, mild strumming |
| Thickness | Width and Height | Resonance |
| 2.30mm@tip | 30 x 31.8mm | Somewhere between Plexiglass and nickle |
| Tip Style | Bevel? | Approx. Cost |
| Medium Rounded | Rounded | 5-15 Dollars US depending on requirements plus shipping |
What about the material?
The Pickslay Zebra wood Pick feels very sturdy and has a decent, sure grip. The maker has ground an edge-to-center curved relief for holding the pick. It makes you hold it a certain way. It rides over the last knuckle of the index finger and the tip of the thumb on the other side and doesn’t want to rotate too badly, it’s a fairly good grip, and the slots in the grain help while not detracting from the tone.
Zebrano (Zebrawood) is a heartwood with a coarse texture (but not too much so) with open pores (but not as much as, say, most Rosewoods.
And oh so pretty!
Just look at this thing o beauty. It’s as attractive a pick as the lovely Iman (you met her in early Star Trek, and Kirk kissed her). The dark moody stripes and light suntan grains cause you to behold something so lovely that you want to marry it. OK, so not quite, but I love using superlatives sometimes because it is fun!
This is highly different from the very soft and delicate Northeastern Pine pick I reviewed a while back. And yet, like that pick, there is a wooden tone. I’d love to learn some Cuban Afro-Jazz with this plectrum.
Of all the wooden picks out there:
Pickslay Woodworking does a good to great job making plectra. They also make other wooden items and they are on Etsy. I would say that I like their pick more than some others out there.
There isn’t a ton to write about with wood picks but I will say this, I recommend this brand with a strong thumb-up rating of 4 out of 5. And mind you, very few picks I try rate higher.