The Tortoise Shell Picks

Tortoise shell picks have a very lovely soft sound because everything these days is synthetic material, some form of polymer plastic. The analog picks of your back when they recorded the tape, tortoise shell, that was the real deal. Also the strings were different back then. Strings were thicker and heavier. So you played a lighter, more organic material on heavier strings and you got less of that sharp brittle sound. And fewer harmonics too, the strings today, the really bright strings and the really aggressive picking and playing closer to the bridge. That's a lot of people do now. You just get really bright sounds with lots of harmonic overtones.