You'll get a lot of advice about picks. Picks are a lot like lovers—well, they're actually not much like lovers at all come to think of it—everyone likes something different. I think both National and Dunlap each supply both fingerpicks and thumbpicks that are suitable for three-finger banjo use. Each, as I recall, makes plastic thumbpicks and metal fingerpicks. The most common fingerpicks used to be the National model with round holes at the pad of the finger and all around the grip or ring part. They were patent no. 1787136. I don't know whether or not they're still made but when I get my banjo out—which is rarely anymore—that's what I use.

My advice is to get a good teacher and use whatever your teacher uses. You can always experiment with different types when you're far enough along that choice of picks will make a difference.

Oh, and find other people to pick with as soon as you can make it through a few tunes.

      - Mark

Congrats Frank and I hope you have a great time!!!

Spaw

~Susan

I'm one of the tenor players here so I don't get involved with finger picks - a good flat pick does me.

Another banjo place I visit that you may like to check out is the alt.banjo newsgroup where there are quite a few 5 string players.

Jon

I have a wife,

Wife hates the banjo,

The future is yet to be written.

Don

      - Mark

Cap't Bob

Cheers
Ray

Good picking ! Ollie

Hey Frank! what a wonderful thread. You will have more fun with a banjo than... well just about anything 'cept maybe drinking a good oatmeal stout or ... hmmm, danged if I can recall.

anyway

Pick how you want, learn as much as you can about your new instrument and tweak it to suit and you won't need to get another until old age sets in and you feel like blowing your kid's inheritance so's the nursing homes don't get it. I still play my $90.00 Saga kit and wouldn't part with it EVER!

CB

True story from a truly excellent old time fiddler friend. He says he was unable to get a sound from the fiddle he was not completely ashamed of until he had been playing for two years. At one point during this two year period he was so depressed by his lack of progress on the fiddle that he decided he would start learning old time banjo as well. He was hoping to make faster progress on the banjo and boost his confidence. He says he was fully aware of the irony of learning to play banjo to improve his self-esteem.

I have a guitar, a bunch of harmonicas, a reasonably nice electronic keyboard ... and you know, a slide whistle and stuff ... and I can't play any of them worth a crap. No ambition, I guess, or maybe too much.

Well anyway, you guessed it, now I'm thinking about buying a banjo. Chance are excellent that I'd never learn to play it either, but who knows? I really love the things, and there's something wonderfully, uh, contrary about the banjo. It's so disparaged by virtually everybody that it might finally click with my cranky, discontented nature.

Just getting through "Brother Jim Got Shot" once would be worth a few hundred clams, wouldn't it? Ehem, I said wouldn't it?

Kurt "gonna lay down my old guitar" Gegenhuber

Welcome into the fraternity. As mentioned above, your best defence is offence. Learn as many banjo jokes as you can so you can head your detractors off at the pass.

They can be extremely frustrating, but stick with it. Find a good teacher, listen to lots of Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs.

Check this site out, it might be helpful.

Banjo Hangout