What Are They Made From?

Our pick bodies are made from no less than two pieces of wood, usually medium and or hardwoods, some rare and hard to acquire or even impossible to get again, such as our 400-year-old English Oak recovered from a barn just outside London, England. These woods comprise the front and rear of the finished picks, as well as the scroll saw cut inlays

What are “Copperheads”?

Copperheads are wood-based picks with a hand-hammered portion of copper shaped by hand and hammer to with a thickness of no more than 0.5mm. The copper is drilled through at four points and inserted into a routered out inset at the playing edge of the pick and secured with Titebond Premium Wood Glue. The holes drilled through the copper allow the glue to flow between both pieces of wood and create a bridged bond to further secure the copper.

The purpose of copper is to promote the tonal enhancement, increased sustain, and deeper resonance than can be achieved through synthetics.

Why are the priced so high?

Every pick is handmade from a choice of 25 to 30 different species of wood depending on availability. Every piece of copper used to create the Copperhead design is hand-hammered from 12 gauge copper electrical wire, usually recovered from demolition or construction sites so we can contribute in some tiny way to less waste.

We researched pricing and spoke to professional players, luthiers, and music store owners as well as looking at other pick offerings like Gravity, Blue Chip, and a few other higher-end products. Besides these other products being 90% machine-made through CNC, laser-cutting, and mold injection with only a few models receiving a cursory deburring or refinement by hand on a grinder, they have no artistic aesthetic or originality. Those picks are selling from $25 to $75 a piece, without our patent-pending Copperhead design.

Our pricing is considerably lower given the labor, artistry, and investment in protecting our Copperhead designs.

We also offer custom inlay of simple logos, initials and some geometric patterning with our price structure of between $25 and $50 depending on complexity and wood species preferred.

Why do you charge for shipping?

We aren’t Amazon and we don’t use Amazon to promote, sell or deliver our product. We depend on the good folks working in the postal industry to deliver our creations to your door. That is an added expense but includes tracking for domestic shipping and some foreign shipping because we only ship “First Class”.

When we package and ship a pick, it isn’t simply dropping a pick in an envelope and slapping a stamp on it. Each pick is packaged in a small jewelry baggy with a serialized description sheet that includes a description of wood species, basic measurements, and a description of shape. we do this so that should you lose a pick and wish to purchase its replacement, we can strive to recreate it to the best of our ability based on what you originally purchased.

After the pick has been packaged in the baggie with the insert, we add a small piece of 800-grit sandpaper and a 3 x 5-inch canvas string draw pocket bag so you can store the pick when not in use.

All of this is then placed in a bubble-cushion shipping envelope or box to protect the pick from damage. All these shipping materials come at a cost and we only charge what it costs to ship the pick in a manner befitting their value and beauty.