In pursuit of the tone - namely the sound of Wes Montgomery - I abandoned using a pick several years ago. While this has its drawbacks when I'm looking to strum (especially in say a funk context) I'm a convert otherwise: It's fine for comping, and great for chord soloing and single-note octave lines.

Fingerpicking affords a much greater range of tonal colours and expression: Virtually never use the volume knob anymore, except to set an initial level, any volume modulations I need can be accomplished in a "tactile" manner.

For that matter, I never end up touching the tone knob, as a wide range of tonal colours are a literally at ones fingertips when playing without a pick. While I believe Wes only used his thumb, I've found using my index, middle and (on occasional) ring fingers - in a sort of hybrid classical guitar technique, though without any nails - is what's working for me.

Read more of this post at Justin Perdue's myspace blog...