This year will see the fifth anniversary of fretless zithers becoming a major focus of this blog. The upbeat was in March 2021, when I most recently took my trusty 12-bar Oscar Schmidt autoharp back into service after a period of inactivity. This was far from this first time that happened since 1952, when my mother bought it brand new to share with her five-year-old kid.
The reason for the most recent dusting-off was a rekindled interest in Irish traditional music (ITM) that has grown in intensity ever since. One of the thoughts at its outset was to become proficient on the tenor banjo; a mainstay in the performance of dance tunes. My maternal grandfather gave me a four-stringed soprano banjo (a half-sized tenor designed for the early 20th-century banjo bands) not long after the autoharp joined the family. I immediately turned my attention to it but didn’t acquire any particular skill beyond playing chords, before moving on to its five-stringed cousin when I was eleven.
A lesson learned early in the ITM project was that my hands had aged enough in the meanwhile to protest at more than the briefest outing on either the tenor or five-string banjo, to say nothing of the even wider necked guitar. (A more recent reacquaintance with a mandolin has raised hope that it may prove tractable, as the soprano banjo where this all started would likely also still be.) Fortunately, there was no corresponding issue with the autoharp. When embarking on what appeared likely to become a protracted involvement, I replaced the serviceable but worn fingerpicks long since acquired primarily for bluegrass banjo, with a fresh set for the new initiative.
I noted that the once dominant brand of metal fingerpick, National, was no longer in production. However, the extensive array of comparable picks made by Dunlop included a model that seemed satisfactorily close to the earlier Nationals. It was (and remains) available in both brass and nickel silver, in six gauges from .013″ to .025″, making it ideal for zeroing in on a set personally calibrated to an autoharp. (The broader exercise included plastic picks but I ended up sticking with metal and am keeping the present discussion mainly to it.)
A few months after my gearing up for the trial run, D’Addario, another large-scale manufacturer, acquired National Finger Picks and reintroduced the classic design to the market. It is produced in three different alloys (adding stainless steel) but only one gauge for each (none much thinner than .025″). Its arrival fueled discussion on online forums dedicated to fretted instruments and steel guitars, comparing the industrial reincarnation both with surviving exemplars of National’s earlier production, and a range of artisan reproductions.
The selection of picks is also a recurring topic in the autoharp community and many tutorial videos include a discussion of the presenter’s perspective on it. Hal Weeks developed a structured approach to such evaluation, which he explains and applies in a playlisted series. The present post calls attention to the more recent appearance of the D’Addario Nationals, and explores the historical context of their development.
C. F. Zimmermann included the following directive and illustration in a tutorial guidebook for his small-style (“miniature”) autoharps. This was published in several editions beginning in 1885, with varying titles centered around Popular Figure Music for the Autoharp, and labeled according to the style of the instrument with which they were included. (The playing technique Zimmermann foresaw for his large autoharps is examined in the preceding post.)
“The two Picks which accompany each Instrument are to be used in playing, the shell one on the thumb and the brass spiral pick on the first finger of the right hand, to be used in picking the melody, and the thumb to run the chords, like this—”
The text is presented in parallel German, where the thumbpick material is identified as horn. The media files of the Autoharp group on Facebook include at least two instances of this, as well as a photo of a brass spiral fingerpick.
What were presumably typical prices for these picks are seen in the Spring 1904 catalog of Sears, Roebuck, and Co.
There is a separate listing in the same catalog for zither rings (i.e., thumbpicks) of horn, German silver, and steel. All are notably more expensive than the celluloid autoharp thumbpick. The catalog includes other fretless zithers under their own headings. The Columbia Zither is sold with a pick but nothing is said about what type. The Deweylin Harp is mechanized so that “no picks or rings are required.”
Stepping briefly out of chronological order, Sara Carter wore picks of the advertised type in a series of photos of the Carter Family taken by Eric Schaal. They were scheduled for inclusion in a December 1941 issue of LIFE magazine but their publication was preempted by coverage of Pearl Harbor. The background story and photo gallery are online here.
The introduction to the Briggs’ Banjo Instructor, published in 1855, notes that its author “played so strong that he had to get a piece of steel made for the end of his finger, as a sort of shield, to prevent his tearing off his nail.” The main text calls the underlying technique “striking.”
“…the thumb and first finger only of the right hand are used… The strings are touched by the ball of the thumb, and the nail of the 1st finger. The first finger should strike the strings with the back of the nail…” [italics in original]
Later instruction manuals refer to this as “banjo style” and add a “guitar style” to it, also termed “plucking,” where the strings are plucked toward the player with the flesh side of the fingertips. Fingerpicks designed to move in either direction began to appear, with the spiral design among them. Norman E. Bates filed a US patent application for a metal “Picking-Thimble for Musical Instruments” on 27 September 1888, issued as US401476 on 16 April 1889. It was intended for “stringed musical instruments, especially banjos.”
The patent description notes that, “for banjos two thimbles are necessary, for guitars three, and for harps they will be needed on all the fingers.” It is not clear what type of harp Bates had in mind. There is no evidence of the players of concert harps ever having adopted his suggestion of placing a thimble pick on every finger, but later players of the autoharp certainly did.
William Thedorf described what would become a prevailing approaching to manufacturing picks by bending a T-shaped piece of sheet metal into bands wrapped around the finger and a curved blade. On 13 March 1906, he applied for a US patent for a Pick for “banjos, guitars, and the like…of such construction that it will keep the player informed by the sense of touch what is being done.” It was issued to him on 5 February 1907 as US842920.
One of the most commonly encountered following designs appeared in a US patent for a Pick for Stringed Musical Instruments, applied for by George D. Beauchamp on 30 July 1928, and issued to him on 30 December 1930 as US1787136. Its primary claim is not the T-shape but the addition to it of a “plurality of recesses into which the flesh of the finger or thumb is adapted to protrude to aid in holding the pick in adjusted position.”
Beauchamp was one of the founders of the National String Instrument Corporation, which began producing picks while the patent was still pending, albeit without the upper one of the two “perforations” labeled 4′ in the drawing, and an added 5′ hole in the band on either side of the blade. These picks are now valued collector’s items, as are several models subsequently stamped with the patent number, and later ones with “USA” added to it.
The next photo is taken from a discussion on the Facebook Banjo Forum and there are similar exchanges on The Steel Guitar Forum and elsewhere. Typographic differences in the stamped text identify what may be little more than nominal variations of the same physical design.
The following photo shows two fingerpicks that were in my old pick pouch (along with a plastic thumbpick stamped “DOBRO”). They flank one from a larger stash of Nationals that I acquired separately in 1971 (and agonizingly can’t recall where it’s tucked away). The one on the left is an “oval eight,” so called with reference to the shape of the 8 in the patent number, and was the first to be stamped with it. The pick in the middle is the next model; a “round eight.” The one on the right adds “U.S.A.” to that stamp, in the form retained until production ended (with further significance ascribed to differences in the shapes of other digits in the stamp).
On 17 November 1972, James Dunlop filed a US patent application for a “Finger Pick for Stringed Musical Instruments.” It cites both the Thedorf and Beauchamp patents (which had long since expired) treating the latter as the “conventional” design. He claimed modifications to its band for a more comfortable fit, and was issued US3739681 for it on 19 June 1973.
Gabe Hirshfeld demonstrates and reviews vintage Dunlop and National fingerpicks in the following video. The link goes directly to their discussion but the full presentation includes recent oval eight replicas. He updates that list in a follow-up video here. This link goes to a review of the picks made by Dean Hoffmeyer, which is the only one of the four examined models at my own disposal.
Before proceeding with a comparative assessment of these picks on an autoharp, a bit more context about my acquaintance with that instrument might be useful. I first encountered one played in the manner that Maybelle Carter developed subsequent to Sara’s departure from the family ensemble, after I had begun regularly toting my 5‑string banjo to folk music gatherings. At one of them, an autoharp player flaunted their recent discovery of the “Carter scratch,” but demonstrated it as a thing in itself without applying it to an actual tune.
I was 12 years old at the time but had already joined the cadre of nuisance teenagers who frequented Israel Young’s Folklore Center in NYC’s Greenwich Village, where autoharps were regularly heard, providing both chordal accompaniment for song and used melodically. When Jack Prelutsky (aka Ballard) started working there in the early 1960s he showed me the basics of the latter skill, using the same model autoharp as the one I had, with a pair of National fingerpicks and a Dobro thumbpick.
Fast-forwarding into the early 1980s, Izzy had relocated what he labeled the Folklore Centrum, to a few blocks away from my apartment in Stockholm, Sweden. Shortly thereafter, Mike Seeger conducted a workshop at the store, going into autoharp technique in only slightly less detail than he did at the workshop seen in the next video. In the interval between them, an article titled “Reflections of Mike Seeger, an Oldtime-Style Autoharpist,” appeared in the Spring 1990 issue of the Autoharp Quarterly. It includes the following comments on picks, and the following demo is linked directly to his further discussion of them (wearing fingerpicks of two different models).
“I use Dunlop brass finger picks, .0225 gauge. I don’t know exactly why, but they seem to stay on my fingers a little bit better than some others and give a nicer tone. They’re lighter in feel than the old National picks that I used to use. I use a Dobro clear thumb pick… The reason I use these picks is that I was a bluegrass banjo picker and I also use them on the guitar sometimes in the same way. So far, I think this is the best deal for me. I like picks that are close to the ends of my fingers, because I have much more control for my particular style, and I can get a harder sound which I really like.”
The workshop with Mike was my first face-to-face encounter with a diatonic autoharp. This was during a lull in my active interest in that instrument but the impression remained vivid. One of the first things I did when revving up the ITM project was convert my chromatic 12-bar instrument to a diatonic. It soon became clear that it was also showing signs of age, resulting in the acquisition of two new luthier-built autoharps (currently configured as D and G diatonics).
The arrival of the first of them sent me back on a hunt for suitable picks. The rapid ornamentation that is characteristic of the native-style performance of ITM, is sensitive to very small differences between picks. A lot of experimentation and listening went into puzzling out how to execute the core ornaments in ways that an Irish musician might find acceptable.
During the first few years of that ongoing effort, my notion of the best fingerpicks for the job bounced between plastic and metal, with vacillating preferences for different models of both. As noted, metal ultimately became my preference. Of the vintage National picks, the oval eight is my favorite. The round eight is not far behind, and I find the Hoffmeyer picks essentially indistinguishable from it.
Of the new Nationals, the nickel silver model is closest to the vintage National U.S.A. The brass model more approaches the oval eight. However, the distance between any of the new National alternatives and any of the vintage ones is appreciable. The difference is greater still with the recent Dunlops, but in direct comparison with the new Nationals, it is difficult to quantify their dissimilarity.
Another widely available model, produced and marketed by Ernie Ball Inc (as the “Pickey Pick”) comes closer to Thedorf’s 1906 design than it does to any of the others. It also figures in numerous online discussions and video reviews, where it is generally regarded as something that one either likes a lot or not at all. I personally find its narrow tip and light gauge (.020″) to be especially amenable to the precise execution of traditional Irish melodic ornaments on an autoharp.
A question remains about this advantage being worth foregoing the more robust voice of the Beauchamp-type blades. The Hoffmeyer is significantly heavier (.024″) than the Ball but can also comfortably be accommodated to the Irish ornaments. Luckily enough, my aging pick pouch has ample room for both.