Not Using a Pick is Self-Limiting

I'm sorry to read that The Roan is fearful of exploring new sonic experiences. That's right, it seems that there is a fundamental fear of a couple different things here. One, that Jay might somehow be compared to Mark Hoppus. I'm not sure how exactly that would transpire, because I don't recall anyone asking me whether I was hanging out with Mark Hoppus when I was, in fact, hanging out with Jay.

The other fear seems to be that bass "will remain stuck in the eyes of most people as the guitars[sic] fat brother" if one plays it with a pick. Unfortunately, if we were worried about this then I guess fingerstyle playing is out too, isn't it Django? The reality is that both guitar and bass have been, and continue to be, played with a variety of techniques. The bass guitar was originally built by Leo Fender (and others) as something that would be part of the electric guitar family of instruments. Why do you think Fender put pickguards on the Precision right from the start in 1951? He assumed that pick-playing was a possibility. Playing with a pick was not invented in 1974 by DeeDee Ramone. Think of the broader family of stringed instruments. Do violinists say to cellists, or double bassists, "Only we are to play arco!" No. That would be insane. There is nothing wrong with multiple instruments being played with a similar technique.

As to pick playing not cutting through, I have never had that problem. I find it very easy to switch from pick to fingerstyle and back. Jay points out that the tone of a pick can imitated by a variety of pedals or equalizer changes. While I don't concede that these necessarily replicated a proper pic tone, even if they did, all of these options would be more expensive than a $1 pick. MXR micro amp? $100+. Boss GEB-7? Maybe $80 used if you look around. Even if you have an amp with a footswitchable EQ, you'd need to buy the footswitch to do that. Even that would be another $25-40 even used. So even if you thought you had the sound, you would have to spend a lot of money.

In short, it's time to end the anti-pick prejudice - it's self-limiting.