You hold it, you hit strings with it, then you probably drop it down the back of the sofa and say a rude word. Adrian Legg ruminates upon the plight of the plectrum. But then he has a licence.

DECLENSION. The ritual exposition of the forms of a Latin noun, achieved by standing up straight, taking your hands out of your pockets and varying the endings in a sort of socially superior but less useful times-table chant. Much less fun than "erewegoerewe-goerewego", but considered useful in moulding snotty little grammar school kids into respectable conformists.

Plectrum is just such a declinable Latin noun, but thankfully, I can't remember much beyond the plural 'plectra'. The fact that plectrums is now perfectly acceptable as a plural seems to confirm that more people than just me are pissed off with the grammar school ethos.

Pletron is the American version, and bypasses the Latin for the original Greek root Plektron — an implement for striking. Pick is also American, and recalls no adolescent trauma, so I'll go with it.

Tortoise-shell is generally reckoned to give the best tone, but is fading out in the UK. Apparently, sale or importation of it is banned in the USA, and Stefan Grossman told me he paid about four dollars for shell picks in Japan. If you find any still in stock in the UK, you can expect to pay anywhere from 75p upwards.

Shell's gradual demise, while benefitting tortoises, has produced a few oddities in the quest for speed and tone. I was demo ing at Frankfurt when the Min'd stone pick arrived, and quickly replaced T-shirts as the crucial blag. Periodically, some over-excited instrument industry nut would hurtle into my booth, shouting, "Hey man, look at this attack," grab a guitar and break a few strings before rushing back out to try and blag one with a smoother point. I scored two, one sharp-ish, one blunt, and have never actually used them for anything other then hurtling into someone else's demo booth, shouting, "Hey man, look at this attack," and so on. Flat-picks do not have to be practical to be fun.

Metal flat-picks I have never understood. Dunlop produce some, and JHS do some in their 'Pick Boy' range, and whatever the gauge they sound harsh and scratchy on wound strings. They are pretty handy for undoing battery cover screws and cleaning out your nails; one day I expect to see one in a parking meter.

The Pick Boy range also includes a couple of luminous picks for the post-Sellafield/Chernobyl generation. When you drop one on-stage you can get the lighting crew and the house manager to black out everything so you can find it again in the dark. Good, eh? They also cater for the heavy metaller's XH pick with a skull and cross-bones on it; none of this wimpy 'medium' stuff.

But the super thick plecs have other adherents, and the Dunlop shirt buttons are a fave among jazzers. They come in a variety of points, labelled Jazz I, II, or III, and are ideal for whizzing around the augmenteds with a Wes Montgomery flavour, as well as for digging in for the fleshy, Buchananish harmonics on a Tele. Ovation put out a bubble-packed thicky containing graphite and carrying the Adamas logo in small quantities a couple of years ago, and this offered those used to a standard sized pick the chance to experiment a little (as well as being virtually indestructible) . There used to be a nasty hard plastic thicky with a sharp point, jade green, with Holder stamped on the side in gold. My last one rattled up the Hoover tube years ago, but it has been reincarnated in black with Eros stamped on the side. Rose-Morris from whom I scrounged one, tell me Julian Lennon likes them. So there.

Another oddball with a longer history is the Lanstrom Design Sharkfin. At first sight, it's like a fork that won't pick up a decent mouthful from the plate but nonetheless won a Design Centre award — like some piece of art that must express the essence of 'plectrum' without actually functioning. In fact, the mediums and upwards function extremely well, offering two possible picking edges, a pretty good grip, and a knobbly bit.

I would welcome advice on just what the knobbly bit is for or have I missed the point and it's actually a subtle Bauhaus quote expressing the futility of biomorphism as... (No — Ed.)

Dunlop have copied it in their new miracle Tortex ((c) TM (p)(r) etc) although the one I bought was in a remainder box going cheap. This Tortex stuff is actually rather good and along with the matt white Dean Markley picks is one of the grippier materials on the market. I just did a horribly fast latin-ish rhythm track with a .60mm gauge Dunlop without dropping it once — which is quite something for me. I can drop picks through the holes on an Adamas at the rate of three a number.

Both the Dunlop and the Dean Markleys have the happy old habit of deforming under grip, rather like my ancient shell jobs, and come in a surprisingly useful range of thicknesses. I confess my first reaction was totally cynical: two decimal places in millimetres, ho-ho, techno-sell, innit? Well it may still be, but a handful of them will cover the thrash range from tickling a Nashville tuning to bashing seven bells out of a 12-string very nicely, and Dunlop do the shirt-button in a Tortex version.

I see less point in the shiny Dean Markleys, and little in the shiny Delrin Dunlops, except that some are quite nice colours. Quite nice colours are not to be sniffed at. If you choose a selection that will clash nastily with most of the floors/carpets you play on, then you will find them easily when you drop them. The only reason I used to use the big white rounded triangle Fender ones was because it was easier to see the escape trajectory.

C F Martin thoughtfully catered for us flat-pick chuckers by making a plastic job with what almost amounted to a handle on it. Sadly, the extra bulk merely provided me with more impetus, increased my average distance, and, consequently, virtually doubled the search area.

John Pearse is clearly sick of fishing picks out of his Martin collection; he has had a bash at the grip problem and tackled it by extending the top left area of the pick so that more is available between thumb and forefinger — without making the pick unduly large overall.

Some of the plasticos whose only interesting feature is that they have someone's brand name stamped on them can be quite grippy, depending on the number of letters. For instance, Allbang & Strummit and their phone number has a better staying power than Ibanez medium, and the depth of paint on an Ernie Ball can vary enough to make a difference.

Nylon picks are still about and, though tonally fairly soggy, most offer some sort of grip surface. The most recent is designed to appeal to ageing hippies, and is called a Reefer. It has this legend and what I take to be a dope plant, plus a gauge figure embossed on the sides, as well as a claim that it contains carbon fiber (sic). It also says "Hi Modulus" on one side, but doesn't indicate whether this is the modulus of elasticity or of rigidity, or merely a greeting.

Whatever, an unexpected, out of character, and very loud rock thrash in Dorset reduced it to a shadow of its former self very quickly — I expected more from such an imposing thing, somehow. But then all old hippies expected miracles, and look what happened...

Fingerpicks are those things you last saw hurtling towards the foot lights, and last heard as the MC stood on them. The most expensive real shell ones usually travel fastest and furthest, unless they are tight enough to make your fingertips blue. Thumbpicks are similar, but more likely to hit you in the eye. Mr Grossman complains that the clear plastic Dobro thumbpicks are now made thinner than they used to be, but I cannot sympathise fully because I always thought thumbpicks were merely devices for Chet Atkins freaks who wanted to imitate his sort of asphyxiated Alberti bass. Metal fingerpicks can be cramped up tight on your fingertips with your molars, at least tight enough to stop bloodflow and sometimes enough to cause gangrenous cuticles.

I have to say I see no point in fingerpicks now. Once there was a case that they could give you more volume on an acoustic, but at the expense of tone. When I used to use fingerpicks and flat-pick together, I heard someone say that the difference between using picks and fingers was like the difference between making love with a Johnny and making love without one.

I threw away my picks immediately, and while the metaphor may be a little tricky in some company, I found it extraordinarily apt.

Acoustic pickups and miking techniques are getting better all the time, so there is less of a case for someone starting now to need picks, and a positive case against them if they prevent you from gradually building up strength in your nails and fingertips.

But having said all that, I heard Grossman whacking out some pretty convincing blues with them on a recent London gig. So they have at least a historic place, tonally — and if an authentic rough-edged blues sound is your thing, watch out for nickel grime in cracked cuticles.