Please recycle: What was a soda can is now a pick, the US Blues Big West Creations Aluminum Electric Guitar Pick!:

Making Aluminum from a refining and melting process out of Bauxite involves a great deal of electricity, the US Blues Big West Creations Aluminum Electric Guitar Pick is electric…

Using a lot of juice leads to being a great electric guitar pick! Anything fired with a lot of electricity just has to be great for electric music, no? So the US Blues Big West Creations Aluminum Electric Guitar Pick might have some fire and ice in it, do you think?

Here is a tidbit on the manufacture of Aluminum.

I got my aluminum pick through Amazon from US Blues Artist Quality Guitar Picks

It has a few lightly engraved grip lines in it, but they don’t help too much with gripping. It came with some sticky rubber to hold it on a card, however, and I kept that stick-em on it and it helps the grip. I do like to use one of my previously reviewed pick grip devices, the Mojo Grip Ring. That item is no longer available as far as I can tell…

The Mojo Grip works perfectly with this pick, for one, the pick is very rigid with no flex (other than the ductility of aluminum), and the plectrum is thin enough.

The flat-pick is also similar to a 351 shape with a more blunt tip and rounded edge throughout, so the grip ring mates well with it.

Now this pick being metal gives a sound that also makes one think of speed metal music.

It is a little gritty, with a very firm attack. The feel is a bit nicer than some of my other metal picks that I will review in the future.

Also, being it is aluminum, it is softer and should be less hard against tin-coated electric guitar strings. And, yes, I said electric strings, because I wouldn’t use this on a flat-top acoustic, if one did so, they’d tear up the pickguard or wood of the guitar and it would sound too brutal.

And brutal is the tone, surprisingly a more brutal tone than a Stainless pick. This Big West US Blues Aluminum Guitar Pick is for rocking.

I attribute this to the fact that there is a roughness to the edge of the pick compared to harder stainless steel. Still, I’d use this pick in the more aggressive tunes in Jazz-Rock. I could imagine Larry Coryell using this on the song Birdfingers.

A good speed pick for sure.

But speaking of speed, it would be interesting to try a similar pick with a finer tip on it for speed picking. This Big West US Blues Aluminum Guitar Pick is a bit softly round, yet you could still pay fairly fast on it. But still, I’d love to try one with a finger time, not too pointy though.

So on with the specs, I know you are asking to get right to it!

Still, this pick will support some strumming because of its shape.

The thickness of .70mm seems just right, you can almost sense some flexibility, but it’s probably my imagination; I how no idea why it feels that way being it is a metal pick.

Here at https://pickfetish.com we are focused on the more technical aspects of picks. And yes, there is a very large pick-collecting community out there, and I won’t ignore collectibles over the coming seasons. I cover metal picks in this section of the site, have a look-see!

However, as a user and a player, I started out years ago searching for the “right pick”, the “solution”…

I’ve come to realize that there is no “right pick”, but there ARE picks that are right for specific uses and styles. The Big West US Blues Aluminum Guitar Pick is ideal for aggressive music. Or Ska, yeah, maybe do ska on it, if you like that sort of thing, but we don’t need to go there, do we?

One thing I think about more and more is sustainability with musical gear.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I do worry about our ecosystem and the survival of our species. My children’s children, I worry about leaving them a good world that I didn’t wreck for them. An aluminum pick can, of course, be recycled theoretically. Sure, plastic picks are often more suitable, but what do we do with those plastics?

I understand there are some recently discovered bio-critters that can eat some plastics, so there is some hope.

I can’t cease using plastic picks, because this site would never exist if it weren’t for them, but recycling is something we all need to support, finding a way other than landfilling with these devices. We need to at least commence a talk about some solutions.

So a pick that came from a Coke can, it seems like a decent idea, right?

This is an excellent pick for that really rocking riff you want to churn out, and it is at least a little easier on strings than some harder metals.

I hope to cover more metal picks in the future, I have a couple of coins (but I need to get a few more), and some other picks like Stainless and Copper. Keep checking here, I’ll get to them as soon as I get through some of the other oddballs and such!

In the meantime, make your music, and try an aluminum pick, try Etsy to shop for some. And keep practising and do your theory. Yes, DO it, it helps!

Now, speaking of plastics, there is a constant search for materials that capture some of the qualities of tortoise shells. Will this next upcoming review show such a result? We will see, and of course, it’s all subjective…

Have you tried Metal picks, and which metals have you used?