HISTORIQUE

Jean-Charles Dugain

Once upon a time was my passion for picks born.

My brother played guitar and used to often lose his picks, as little as I may have been I used to endlessly pick them up.
Later on, playing guitar myself, the little plastic triangle was just as undisciplined, as it used to slip through my fingers, harming my musical concentration.
Many years later, I borrowed my music tutor’s pick, and forgot to give it back. On the following day he died in a car accident. My sorrow was such that in his memory I planted his pick on his tomb.
Throughout the years has the pick’s seed grown, from the intimate and intense relationship that Guitar and I have built, from the love of Sound and Music, from the compulsory osmosis that exists between a guitar player and the Instrument. Dugain’s pick was born from this life link.

1968: Birth of my passion for Guitar

Not long after do I follow a very intense training with my guitar and music teacher: Joseph Dejean who has disappeared on the 9th of June 1976, leaving me with the obligation of becoming a self taught player.
At the age of 13, I perform my first concerts with a band in different Parisian cultural centres and start teaching Guitar and musical theory through particular and collective classes.
.
1977: The « DUGAIN pick» concept was created.

Encountering several problems with all kind of picks through the years, especially troubles of pre-emption due to fingers perspiration holding it, I discover the non-slippery advantage of wood with which I used to build homemade picks. Some guitar colleagues have then started to ask me to build them some.

1982: birth of the ‘ergonomic’ pick

Considering the success of a potential commercialisation of this new pick, I got information from INPI regarding the type of protection I could expect. The answer was that there was no protection what so ever. Pick already existed, the simple use of a different material to build it, was not a good enough reason for it to be patented, there had to be a change in shape for it to be subject to a new patent. After much thought I discovered that if creating a pick off a 4mm thick piece, I could dig prints on each side, and then guarantee the optimum holding. The non-skid quality of wood, offering a sucking effect, finally enabling the player to forget the existence of the pick between his or her fingers, substantial advantage as one knows how hard it may sometimes be to keep a pick in hand.
All I then had to do from then on was to sharpen the pick head. The 4mm of thickness had to be reduced as much as possible to allow the player to attack the string with the edge of the pick. This is how I started specialising in picks profiling, discovering that each guitar player may require a particular shape depending on the way of holding, but also because each shape offered different sounds, going from the warmest : thick pick, to the sharpest : sharp thin pick.

May 1985:

I receive the 4th price (of 5) of the ‘company creating competition’ of Jacques Douce Foundation (2 000 participants). I was then not only presenting my project of ‘ergonomic pick’, but also a project of a case made of invaluable wood inspired by the pick which deserved a case as precious as itself. I had previously patented little cases containing a little built in slot maintained by magnets and a closing system also magnetic and invisible.

1990, I was making approximately 40 000 picks distributed in several European countries, United states, distributed by Jim Dunlop Co, the main international supplier of accessories for music instruments, in Canada and Japan.
Today, we offer you a wide catalogue which we will keep regularly fleshing out with new models to satisfy as many guitar players as possible.
Pickly yours !