That is a great thread OP. I tip my hat to you.
Heads up, I will elaborate quite a bit.
I play rotosounds stainless steels 45-105 gauge, tuned to Eb and sometimed to drop Db. They are quite bright and they tend to chew picks quite quickly no matter the material.
By now I play pick style 90% of the time. Before it was the other way around so it did not matter to me that much. I just got a few of the thickest tortex I could get and go for it.
The more I shifted towards playing with the pick the more I realised that thick picks were effecting my dynamic range, especially when trying to play quieter. With the thick picks it felt that no matter how soft I attacked the strings my dynamics were still louder than what I wanted. So I started going down gauges. The lowest I went were the 0,60 tortex.
Those picks taught me how to control the pick. I went back between regular and the big triangle tortex shape and I even moved a gauge up to the yellow 0,72 tortex picks. I was convinced those were the best for me.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. The problem is when I play live the stage usually has a higher temperature than my practice space and also my hands to be warmer and more sweaty. I noticed that this affects the tortex material (the heat mostly) making them a bit softer and more flexible.
That is why I eventually switched to the green .88 tortex. I do not like how they feel in the colder rehearsal room, but for live applications the work very nicely.
My search did not end there though. I was still going through the picks relatively quickly and that bothered me. So after hearing about the Ultex picks being indestructible (hint: they are not), I thought about giving them a go. I tried the .73 sharp since that was the gauge closest to my favourite one.
But it did not hit it home for me. However a 2 interesting observations were made.
The Ultex material feels softer and more flexible to me than tortex but it seems that these qualities are not affected as much by temperature and secondly the sharp shape survives the rotosound chewing for longer before the pick becomes a blunt edge of flop.
So I just moved to 0.90 ultex sharp and I have been very happy ever since.
