I’ve been playing guitar for only a short while, and I’m getting the clicking sound of pick hitting the string right before the note sounds which is really bugging me. It’s especially prevalent higher up the neck. How do I eliminate it? I’m playing a Gibson SG with Ernie Ball 10s and a light pick.
Try addressing the string with the pick held loosely in your hand, and angled slightly up.
You can try a thicker pick. A thicker pick flexes less thus causing less of that delay (to my ears at least) between picking and string vibrating. I prefer 1 mm nylon picks for this reason. It will definitely take some getting used to if you’ve been playing with thins since you started, however.
It’ll depend on what amp you’re playing through too, and how much that amp distorts the signal. If you play a guitar through a hi-fi amp and speakers, it will sound very thin, with a loud pick attack dying away very quickly to a feeble sustain. To make it sound nicer, decent guitar amp/speaker combos are designed to have non-linear input-to-output characteristic, so the loud attack of the pick is attenuated, and the relatively quiet sustain is amplified. This makes for a much more natural feeling playing dynamic too.
You can introduce some gentle non-linearity into the signal path by using a fuzzbox/distortion/overdrive pedal with the distortion turned down low, and maybe the guitar input level turned down low as well. If you get it just right, it won’t distort so much that it noticable, but you’ll get a noticable improvement in tone, albeit at the cost of extra noise if it’s an iffy pedal. Alternatively, use a compressor.
Not enough bass rolloff filtering can also produce louder pleccy clicks, and guitar electronica is usually designed to drop some of the lower frequencies. Jimi Hendrix used to like his strumming prominent however, and would instruct his engineer Roger Mayer to design in some extra bass response.
second the thicker pick.