New Music Gear Monday: Pickatto Bluetooth Guitar Pick

Just about everything has a Bluetooth connection on it these days, but a guitar pick? If you’re curious what you might want with a connected pick, then it’s time to meet Pickatto, the brainchild of guitarist Michael Murawski.

Murawski found that while most guitar players have a pretty well-developed fret hand, their picking hand lagged behind. Pickatto and it’s accompanying software is a way to count the up and down strokes of the pick so you can improve your picking motion in a quantifiable way. The data is streamed to a custom smartphone app that allows you to set daily and weekly goals, and even measures the pressure of the your fingers on the pick. According to Pickatto, the secret to building speed and endurance in the picking hand comes from a relaxed hand. By measuring the pressure of the player on the pick, it’s possible to see when your hand is tensing up and squeezing too hard, which could ultimately lead to tendonitis or even the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome.

As far as its size, Pickatto is about the size of a heavy guitar pick at 34mm long and 25mm wide. It’s thicker than most at 2.8mm at the bottom picking end, while way thicker at the “wing” on top at 4.1mm. While this might not feel comfortable for performance, Pickatto is a device made for practice, so going from it’s larger size will probably make your normal pick feel a lot better, plus give you some added dexterity to boot.

Pickatto has launched an Indigogo crowd funding campaign to get the ball rolling, and the price for each unit there is only $50USD plus shipping, although there are plenty of other funding tiers available. Check out the company website and the video below that explains how Pickatto works. It’s time to get practicing again.