It's the sound the musician wants that is important. If a pick gives it, the musician decides yes or no. Using a pick (like slap-bass) is just another technique to acquire a desired sound.
There is no question some strings respond better to different techniques than others. There's only one true way to find out, and that's to try. If in doubt, a little gentle pick work will tell in a hurry if the string will respond as desired.
Yep, have tried a felt pick years ago and didn't like them. I guess I'll keep using a reg. pick and see if they cause damage or not. Thanks for the suggestion ampeep.
I currently use a medium guitar pick on electric bass but when I played my bass uke (with pahohoes) I tried fingers first and many types of picks. Seems the best (for me at least) was a medium or light guitar pick.
What I observed was that anything heavier than that caused the string to dance around way too much giving a muddy tone. So try a flexible guitar pick and a light pluck. It may be counter intuitive but it worked much better for me.
Sorry for the posting delay, I am playing mandolin now and spend more time at the Mandolin Cafe.
Glad that helped, Pat, all I can say is that you have to keep the pick flat against the strings or a thin pick could cut into the strings and cut them. I use Pahoehoes and I was concerned about that at first but I just focused on a flat attack and have never had an issue.
Thanks Bob. I've been using a custom Bill Stokes pick with no problems so far. It's made a a material much like tortoise shell and sounds like the old tortoise shell picks did. I think he's either under bill Stoles or Showcase capos. Makes great fingerpicks and capos also.
I'll retry using a softer pick and see how that does. I play flatpickin' bluegrass so no problem keeping one flat against the strings.