My Story
Ever since I was a kid I have always relied on the music of others to carry me through rough times, celebrate great times and create memories to pass slow time. All the while, deep inside I carried an unrealized desire to make my own contribution to that magic propping up my spirit and stiffening my spine and maybe passing the salvation of music along to another soul floating through the chaos. I wanted desperately to unwrap the artist I knew was hibernating inside me.

I tried working in film, behind and in front of the camera, writing the silly stories swirling around in my head and hoping I had enough of “It”, whatever “It” was, to create an escape hatch for those kindred souls seeking shelter in imagination. I even delved into being radio voice in the night, soft talking joy to lonely spirits like me, spinning the songs and rhythms of my idols who saved my sanity, my hope and on more than one occasion, my life.

My favorite sounds have always been those of the acoustic guitar, strummed with a pristine delicacy, to carry on it a story of love or mythic fantasy, the violence of an electric guitar tearing through the air with that same rage that often burned in my youthful heart and even now, my older, life-worn heart if that kid rises up in my mind. I was particularly drawn to the blues and bluegrass that birthed that magical Rock and Roll sound. I wanted to be part of the sound that cut through my soul like the pulsing of my own heartbeat. But I knew I wasn’t Robert Johnson, Dick Dale, Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen.

For 40 or so years I toyed with an array of secondhand guitars and a few new guitars, never really finding the talent, dexterity or, quite honestly, the patience necessary to turn them into the soul saving beacons my heroes wielded with the power of God over my life.

It was in one of those frustrated evenings, sitting out in my wood working shed, or what my wife has describes to friends as “The Fucking Shed”, fruitlessly plucking away at my old Washburn, with its buzzing G string, trying to learn another classic rock standard, that an idea hit me. I hated the feel and sound of my picks. The thinness, cheapness and plasticine clicking sound as it plucked the strings. And, honestly, I had lost almost all of them, so I grabbed a quarter and tried playing with that. It sound better than the plastics I had been using but it wasn’t comfortable and the squared off edge just muddled up the sound.

Looking around I spotted a couple small pieces of scrap hardwood from one of my projects and sanded a few down into rough pick shapes and strummed out a few chords. DAMN! There was a warmth in that sound that didn’t really exist with the plastic picks and an absence of the heavy “clicking” noise that annoyed me with the plastics. After a little while, I started thinking about the brightness and resonance of that quarter I tried using and wondered if there was a way to combine the warmth of the wood and the brightness of metal.

Then lightening struck! What if I could embed a band of copper in the picking edge of a wood guitar pick, maybe I could get something special. What the hell. I had the “Fucking Shed” full of scrap wood, copper wire, a laundry list of adhesives and enough power tools to keep any caveman happy! So I set to work hammering out a strip of copper into a “V”, cut down a few strips of hardwood, traced out standard pick shapes on them and tried to figure out how I was going to marry the copper into the wood.

After a few failed design ideas, a few band-aids on lacerated fingers and much cussing, quitting and restarting, I finally pulled it off. After I assembled the final design, sanded out the final shape and held my creation over the strings, I hesitated for a moment and wondered “Why did I go through all that given I still can’t play for shit?” and ran it across the open strings. Holy Shit!!

The sound that came out of my beat-up Washburn was a sound I did not think she was capable of making. Sure, that annoying buzz was still there but now that buzz had character! It carried on it a brightness and resonance I never knew I could create. Then I started plucking the strings individually and I felt an immediate and absolute purpose in the connection between the copper edged pick and nickel wrapped strings. Like two pieces of a puzzle coming together for the first time to finish a picture nobody had ever seen before.

Now, I’ll admit that this new pick I built with my own hands didn’t make me a better guitar player. That still requires talent, dedication and a lifetime of practice. No. It didn’t make me a better guitar player but it did make my amateur guitar playing a lot easier on the ears and even more interesting to listen to. If it made me easier to listen to, what would it sound like in the hands of a skilled artist? I was dying to find out. So, I had a few friends and one or two “professionals” take my design for a spin and the feedback was amazing!

Initially I was greeted with the standard “I hate thick picks, Dude!” My picks average between 1.5 and 2.5 millimeters at their apex. But, after a few hours, and for one guy, a few shows, the reviews were almost universally positive. The accuracy, resonance and brightness erased any concerns about thickness. I was told “they just feel, play and hold ‘better!’”. Watching one of my “testers” riff out an insane Cliffs of Dover picking barrage to a live audience was stunning. The speed, accuracy and control he was able to demonstrate was epic!

Believe it or not, it still hadn’t clicked for me that I had something unique. It took my wife kicking me in the ass to make me realize I was holding the answer to my long-held dream of putting my mark on music. With her unembellished directness she said “You should try selling these.”. Okay, I thought. But how do I present them? Don’t they need a name? Should I start a company? What do I call that?

As providence is want to do, the answers came to me through the music that pushed me to this point. Watching an old documentary on Robert Johnson and other godfathers of the Blues that gave us Rock and Roll, I heard an old woman speak the words that would become this world my creations would rise from. In the interview, when asked about how Robert Johnson went from a less than competent guitarist to the blues impresario he is now known to be, in just a year, she credited “Old Scratch”. The Devil. The bargain at the crossroads. BANG! That was it! “Old Scratch Picks”!

But what about the picks themselves? Don’t they deserve a name? What would set them apart and project that sharpness, accuracy, resonance and killer strike of the copper head plucking magic from a simple nickel string? What would I call this copper headed device… HOLY SHIT! There it is! It took its own name! COPPERHEAD*!

And so the Copperhead* was born!

I will never claim to be anything more than one lucky son of a bitch. I was fortunate or maybe stubborn enough to put aside mediocrity and let that deeper need to put something out into the world as payback for the power that music has had in my life.

All this being said, if you’ve come this far, just know that 55 years down the road that is my life, I was have been fortunate to marry a woman who was cleared eyed enough to see my potential, strong enough to push me forward and loving enough to let me spend uncounted hours in “The Fucking Shed” just to realize a dream even I didn’t think I would fulfill. Thank you, Soraya. Your support is the mother of this creation as much as my need to give back was the father.

For every struggling, hardworking and frustrated guitar player out there, I hope my story and the story of the Copperhead*, gives you that push to never stop, no matter how frustrating the road might seem. Dreams delayed are not dreams denied! Until you stop breathing, hope is always alive and your dream has potential. If I could find mine in “the Fucking Shed”, amongst scraps of wood and with no real guitar playing talent, imagine what you might accomplish with one of my picks? And even though I call my company Old Scratch Picks, I’m not asking for a soul bargain. Just some trust, desire and willingness to trust something different. And if you’re already a successful guitarist or mandolin player, I am pretty damn sure my Copperheads* will take your talent to another level.

Imperfection

No one thing is ever perfect for everyone. When I started making my picks, it was just for me. I wasn’t seeking a perfect pick but I’ll admit I played around with that question, “What is the perfect pick?”. Simple answer, “The one you like” and the one I like isn’t necessarily going to be the one anyone else would like. That old adage, “You can’t please everyone.” is generally true and when I decided to start making guitar and mandolin picks to sell, I ascribed to that adage insomuch as I will never make that “One” pick that every guitarist, mandolinist or stringed instrument noodler will think is perfect. That pretty much guarantees I’ll be making my picks until I can’t. I figure, if I can’t make one perfect pick to please everyone, I’ll make a as many as I can to hopefully please a whole lot of individuals. I will make every single one by hand, focusing on the beauty of the wood grain, color and natural iridescence of a each polished or waxed piece. That’s it, in a nutshell. Perfection is an illusion and I accept that. Imperfect beauty, on the other hand, that is better than perfection!

Now that that is settled, let me tell you why my picks are imperfectly beautiful. I hand make each pick from between one and three or four different woods out of my 20 or so species I keep on hand. I cut bulk wood, slabs, logs, branches, burls, whatever, into planks. I source my stock from my own yard, friends, a couple exotic wood suppliers locally and occasionally from online sources for the really hard to find stuff not locally available at the small mills around me. I hand trace onto those planks whichever picks I feel like making that day or any that have been custom ordered. I cut out the traced blanks for straight wood picks, then just rough up and glue together and pressure set, between wooden blocks in a vice. For the Copperheads, I cut the blanks but then dado in the recess for the copper on each side of a copperhead then I hammer out, with a couple different hammers and benchtop anvil, the copper inserts for those. Once the copper is roughly shaped and thinned, I cut it to size to fit in the recess of the pick blanks that make up the two sides of the Copperhead. All three pieces are then glued up, put together and aligned, then placed between two blocks of wood and placed in a vice to dry under as much pressure as my hands and a pair of channel locks can apply to the handle of the vice. Roughly 150lbs of pressure or so.

Once the pick blanks have dried overnight, I pull them from between the wood blocks and sand them down to near their final thickness, grinding back the excess copper on the Copperheads* as well until it is flush with the edge of the pick blank. At this point, I might pour myself a bourbon or a cup of tea, depending of the time and availability of either, and settle in at the disk sander to dial in the final thickness, shape and, in the case of the Copperheads*, distance from wood edge picking edge, somewhere between .1 and 1.0 millimeters, depending on the model, wood being used and if a client likes a particular width to compliment their playing style. The stages are fine sanding/polishing by hand, applying my signature fire brand and applying a bees wax and mineral oil preservative.

At any point during this process, imperfection is my constant companion. Whether it be a slight deviation from the intended shape of the pick, a slight inconsistency of thickness over the body or with the width of the exposed copper. Maybe a weird whorl or stain in the wood. Somewhere along the line, imperfection blesses these little gems with individuality and character. Imperfection is not a bug in my picks, it is a feature. I learned a long time ago that it is the imperfections in people, pets and most of all what surrounds us in this world that make living in it better, beautiful and often times, unforgettable.

All this being said, if you buy one of my picks, don’t expect perfection, instead expect performance, beauty and pleasure. Each pick is one of a kind. No machine stamped, laser etched or mold injected. Just heart, soul and a few drops of bourbon if you and I are lucky!

Why use wood and copper

I use wood in two different ways. In my non-copper picks, the wood imparts a warming of tone on the strings when strummed or picked. Medium woods are particularly suited to this effect but hard woods also have that warming with an aggressive bite. The difference is in how each affects the resonance or vibration of the strings and the style of the player. The medium woods provide a lower resonate vibration with a natural warmth, minimizing and almost eliminating the usual “clicking” noises created by plastic, nylon and acrylic picks. In a recording environment, this presents a purer sound.

As for what happens when wood and copper meet, well, the copper brings out more brightness, resonance and sustain while the jacketing of the copper between the wood eliminates the tinny or twangy metallic sound inherent with straight metal on metal contact of an unjacketed metal pick. My copper picks are built to make the instrument deliver the best sound possible in a performance or live environment with brighter notes, more powerful resonance and longer sustain. The copper edge pulls the brightest sound from the strings because metal loves metal. If you hit a piece of metal with a plastic or nylon it doesn’t sound complete. Like something is missing. And that plastic clicking of synthetics… I hate that damned clicking!

So, there you have it, my self-important diatribe on why you should spend your hard earned money on my imperfect little beauties. I’m not promising that they will make you a better player but I am pretty sure they’ll make your instrument sound better whether you are an amateur or a professional.

Love, Peace and Music,

M. Stephen Gardner

*US Patent 11676561-B1