Boutique brand offers innovative Thumb Pick and Slide Ring designs for maximum versatility and playability
(Image credit: Black Mountain Picks)
For hundreds of years, mankind has had a musical love affair with stringed instruments and finding better ways to play them. In the early 1900s, a golden era in the evolution for guitar in America, a company called National Guitar patented metal finger picks that amplified the playing of acoustic instruments, like banjo and guitar, and improved the articulation and playing experience on horizontal guitars like the resonator guitars that National built.
The intrepid resonator players found a unique soulful quality could be achieved when the instrument was played with a slide, typically a metal bar manipulated with the left hand. Steel string guitarists, too, found ways to adapt the slide sound to blues playing, some through homespun innovations like sliding a glass pill bottle deftly gently on the strings.
On the surface, such innovations can seem simple, but each has proven to be powerful enough to change the course of musical history. So when a company like Black Mountain Picks comes along with a fresh take on the thumb pick and slide players should pay close attention.
The boutique brand is led by a single founder, Cole McBride, who is not only a player but also a full-time guitar teacher. After playing with hundreds of different picks, McBride started to create tools for himself and his students that would make playing more fun and also expand their playing options.
(Image credit: Black Mountain)
Black Mountain’s two most notable inventions are the Black Mountain Thumb Pick and the Black Mountain Slide Ring. Each was designed to address and solve real-world playing problems. Where other mass-producing brands are more concerned with selling one pick style to a broad range of players, Black Mountain has taken a different, more personal approach that instead gives consideration to a player’s unique needs.
Just check out the Black Mountain Thumb Pick, with an innovative design that enables players to switch seamlessly from fingerstyle to flatpicking. In the hand, it feels like a regular guitar pick but also a traditional thumb pick. Its unique spring-tension design makes it possible to go from one style to another without putting down or reaching for a new pick.
At the other end of the guitar neck, the Black Mountain Slide Ring offers players more options. Unlike most slip-on slides that take a finger away from the player, the Black Mountain Slide Ring’s spring-loaded, universal-fit allows users to play with a full, four-finger approach, adding the option to use the ring to add slide licks whenever and wherever needed. It’s inconspicuous and fast but still boasts enough weight in high-quality steel to render the tone of a full-sized slide.
McBride’s creations are designed to free up playing style and spark creativity by making playing more fun. No longer will you have to break out of a groove in order to switch picks or grab up and fit on a slide. Black Mountain Picks puts more options right at your fingertips, allowing you to play however and whatever you want, and with extreme comfort and ease.
The Black Mountain Thumb Pick and Black Mountain Slide Ring are physically small inventions that can have a huge impact on your music and playing style. Their friendly design and attention to detail could only have come from a player and teacher like McBride who understands guitarists’ needs – because he’s a player like us.
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