Fred Kelly Picks

Fred Kelly Picks

By Pappy

I do not like thumbpicks.  They are almost always too thick, sit at an uncomfortable spot on my thumb, are cumbersome to handle, come equipped with the ability to dwarf your melodies with the bass notes you’re picking and they are just a pain in the neck in general.

I can’t stand them.  It doesn’t help that playing them requires an entirely different approach to the one you’ve been working so hard on developing this whole time with a flat pick.

This opinion is not a rare one at all.  TONS of guitarists can’t stand thumbpicks for the above reasons.  Some move to flat picks exclusively, some give up on picks altogether and move to using just their fingers, some get frustrated and decide to make own thumbpicks and make them right.

That’s what happened with Fred Kelly.

Now, Fred Kelly wanted to play the music he loved which was what we would now call classic country.  He wanted to play like Merle Travis and Chet Atkins.  He worked hard on trying to get the technique down, but became so frustrated with the thumbpick offerings at the time that he went out and made his own.  He came up with the Speed Pick. 

I’d like to take a moment to point out that the first pick he made was not a slightly-tweaked version of a thumbpick, but a complete reworking.  I mean, just look at it:

It was just the pick he was looking for and it began to pick up steam in the guitar playing world.  Everyone wanted to try these new picks out.  Kelly eventually branched out and ended up making FIFTY-EIGHT different styles of picks today. 

Now, there’s no doubt in my mind that these are the finest thumbpicks in the world.  Beyond the Speed Pick, there’s also the more traditional-looking Slick Pick, and a pick called the Bumblebee which seems to be almost a transition pick to get you from flat picks to thumbpicks with minimal hassle and a gradual learning curve.  He even made fingerpicks called the Freedom Picks that fix a lot of the issues that fingerpicks have.  For instance, a lot of fingerpicks don’t fit perfectly on your fingers and that can lead to huge hassles while playing.  Kelly says with these, all you do is put them in hot water until they’re malleable, put them on your fingers, tighten them up until they’re just right and let them cool.  They’ll keep that size forever unless you repeat the process again. 

Kelly also offers flat picks in a variety of materials and thicknesses with different grips and they all sound different than normal picks.

Fred Kelly picks stand on their own with their quality, but what REALLY sold me on them was Fred Kelly himself.  Well, him and his lovely wife, Helen. 

I emailed them asking if they would be interested in me doing a review of their picks and they asked me to give them a call.  I did and these two charming people stayed on the phone with me for over a half-hour telling me stories about their picks, how Fred started playing, his dissatisfaction with thumbpicks that led to the company’s origin, and every part of it was genuine.  They weren’t pitching to me, trying to get a better review, they were just being the beautiful people they are. 

Fred told me about how he gave Chet Atkins some of his picks, but he accidentally gave him ALL of this particular pick’s prototypes and only realized that after the picks were in Chet’s hands so he asked for one back.  The idea of asking Chet Atkins for a pick back is pretty incredible and if memory serves me correctly, Fred said that Chet told him no-one’s ever asked for a pick back before.

Regarding the Freedom Picks, Fred told me that his sons were not sold on the idea.  They both play guitar, but have generally avoided finger picks because the extra weight is tough to get used to and your muscle memory gets messed up because now your fingers are for all intensive purposes a bit longer and sharper.  He gave them some and asked them to really give them a shot, use them for a couple of weeks and THEN see what they think.  After a couple of weeks, they were converts. 

Every time Fred would pause, unable to recall a specific detail, in swooped the incredibly nice Helen – mind like a steel trap – to help get him back on track and the whole conversation felt more like I was talking to family than complete strangers.

The problem with Fred Kelly picks is that they are so unique and getting into them can be a little daunting.  You could very easily pick the wrong pick and not be as satisfied as you would have had you chosen correctly.  Don’t worry about that though: Kelly offers a sampler pack for a measly five bucks that comes with their five most popular picks.  So you get a small smattering – a generalization of the line save Freedom Picks – for a great price and you can use this to find the picks for you.


One of the picks is a stroke of genius too: It's called the Bumble Bee.  Say you're a normal guitarist who uses a flatpick and wants to experiment with a thumbpick, but they're intimidating.  I know how that feeling goes, and apparently so does Fred Kelly.  So he took a jazz-size pick that most of us are comfortable with and wrapped a loop around it so you can either hold it like a flat pick, or let your thumb do all the work.  The pick can be extended or shortened based on your preference too.  I look at this pick like training wheels for thumbpicks.  I started out with this pick, holding it like a normal pick and then after a few minutes, tentatively let go with my index finger.  It was nervous, like that first wobble when you took the training wheels off your bike, but at least you're not going to crash into the concrete with these.  They turned out to be a great bridge between flatpicks and thumbpicks.

Just a friendly pick you know and love with some pizzaz!

And eventually your index finger falls away naturally and when you're comfortable.

Observe the adjustment capability on the bottom of the pick for length.  The yellow band also swivels to make this one of the most comfortable picks out there.

Thumbpicks are awesome when they’re made right and I have never seen thumbpicks made more right than these.  Add to that Kelly’s 25+ years of making picks, the fact that it’s a family-run company with everything being made in the small town of Grayling, MI (population: 1,799) and you end up with a company that makes stellar products that you can feel good buying from.

I strongly recommend them.  Go to their website, buy yourself a $5.00 sample pack, perhaps even pick up Fred’s amazing CD.  It’s got some great guitar playing on it.


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