At American Pick Company®, we believe that your pick is your primary connection to your instrument. It translates your touch, technique and tone to your strings, and aside from you, is the very beginning of your signal chain and ultimately, your sound.

Every American Pick Company® pick is individually milled, cut, sanded, beveled and polished all by hand, and every leather good is hand-stitched and finished all by a single craftsman in Southern California, USA.

American Picks are virtually identical to real tortoise shell picks. The unmistakeable warm, organic tone & the way the pick excites the string gives a smooth, low-friction, almost violin-bow like feel, without the harsh scratch of a modern plastic pick.

APC® picks are the perfect alternative to today’s picks made from harmful plastics or the time-honored tone of picks made from protected animals, like tortoise shell, horn, ivory and mother of pearl. Our APC® Pick material gives you the exact feel and tone of these once sought-after picks made from now endangered species. Though incredibly difficult to mill, shape, bevel and polish, our pick material gives us the possibility to offer the finest feel and warm, distinctive tone you will ever experience, while producing the lowest impact on the environment possible.

The Environment: Along with the protection of endangered species, American Picks are also Biodegradable, and will not last 1000 years in a landfill like most modern picks made from harmful plastics.

Once, tortoise shell was used by world-class musicians, whose tone, feel and connection with their instrument was paramount.

Now, the best of these professionals choose picks that connect them to their instruments like those picks made from Tortoise Shell.

These aren’t your grandfather’s guitar picks, but they are close to it.

Made in the USA.