Hey there,
I am getting bored at home, cause I am sick. So I decided to check what is available and I found this adorable little Fender combo model that holds picks. 
Its been long time I 3D printed something musical related.
What about your hobbies and guitar connection? For example is there some wood worker? Making some custom decos or holders?
Feel free to share any musical creations with your other hobbies.
3D printed model from plastic. Around 56 grams.
That’s so cool, Michal. Did you design it yourself or source the model for the printer to use?
@DavidP I found model for that. I can do some modeling in 3D programs, but nothing extreme. I think I could model this, but it would take me hours. 
Cool pick holder Michal. Home made is better yet.
I got me a pick holder too. However I didn’t make it. But my boy did when he was maybe 11 or 12 (he’s now 35). My mom took him somewhere that they could make bowls and the likes, then paint them cool looking colors. I always like his work on the bowl. It has 4 different colored sides and I rotate it for different colors ea. week. I do the dusting at my house, so the bowl gets moved every week so it’s easy to rotate to a new color scheme ea. week. The bowl resides in my stereo cabinet and looks great as a decoration too.
Other than that. That bowl don’t normally sit where it is in the picture. The top of my amp is my normal pick holder. One pick out only, stored on top of the amp as in the picture.
During the day I have that pick on top of my desk. I seem to always loose it there. But then I find it and start the process all over again.
This is my other pick holder. It is store bought and has it own cool pick holder too. My wife got it somewhere on line. No idea where. Didn’t think I’d like a wood pick. But man. Once I tried it, I don’t use anything else.
I love them wood picks and they work very well for me.
@HappyCat Jim, that handmade bowl from your son is really special. Its great to see things like that. This cant be bought anywhere.
Wood pick you are saying? Once I heard the bone pick exist too… maybe I will have a look for wood one if you are saying it is good. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Michal, ya sure got that right. Special and can’t be bought. I’m pretty sure my mom took my boy to a ceramic bowl making store where ya make your own bowl and then paint it however. So it’s a three generation thing to me. My mom was involved, my boy was involved, and I got it as a gift from my boy. Irreplaceable.
Thanks for the kind words.
As for the wood pick. Yep, Wood.
Ya can see I’ve used it a bit. Ya can also see the time frame between the two picks. The picks in the box were likely new when I took that picture. This pic is today. I little bit of wear there… fwiw, I play maybe 60/40 using a pick, though it might be near 50/50. Point is, I don’t always use a pick, but if I do, that’s the one I use.
Ya can pick real hard with these pick (jam out hard), or, ya can pick real light too. The wood gives the guitar a fuller tone (in my case anyways) compared to a plastic pick I think.
I really can’t say enough good about how I feel about having a wood pic to use.
I suppose I should break out a new one as ya can see it’s kinda worn. However I’m gonna use it till it’s used so much I can’t use it anymore. Then I’ll get out the new one, with one spare then.
Wish I knew where my wife got them. She don’t seem to know either. I asked.
Do they pop up when they’re done?
very cool, no, no, that’s
Too cool. Discretionary time is a wonderful thing…
I use a random shot glass.
fwiw,
My wife found where she got them picks at.
She found them here
Some website called callie.
Bummer, she sure paid a lot for them. Kinda pricey it seems. As much as I like them though, I will likely have to get another box of spares myself.
Sweetwater has wooden picks (link above.) You don’t need to buy the set with the guitar-shaped box again.
@Carreta A general question about 3D printing… is printing something like the pick holder expensive? I’m thinking more about the price of the “ink”, not so much the devices themselves.
One of the most unappealing things about old-fashioned 2D printing was how expensive companies like HP made the ink for their devices and then did all they could to make them incompatible with 3rd party cartridges. Is the world of 3D printing any better or has the same consumer-hostile strategy been implemented?
oooo, I might get some of the coconut shell ones to try out.
@mattswain Good question. In my opinion the 3D printing for hobby is much much cheaper than you can think. Lets talk in numbers…
The ink - its called filament, its plastic string (different materials can be used like PETG, TPU. Nylon etc.)
Basic price for 1kg of PLA filament is around 17,5$. 1kg = 1000g (for Americans here)
For this model I used around 56g of material by printing 1,5 hour.
The material cost for this print was 0,98$.
3D printer does not eat much energy, we can count rate around 1$ per 24 hours (depends on energy tarif).
The energy cost for this print was 0,06$.
Total cost for this model in material and energy was 1,04$.
I have to mention I used 3 colours in this print, so I used 3 separed 1kg filaments, but rest of materials left for me for future use.
From my knowledge… cheapest 3D printer which can print high quality and also is able to print in multicolor cost around 390$.
The 3D printer cost, knowledge about printing as global and “fee hour rate” as you print custom for someone are the most expensive things. But if you own a printer, you can print lot of things for… really little money. I can remember like this I saved hundreds bucks for printing spare parts and not buying them.
I think base rate for 3D printing 1 hour as custom is around 1-2$.
So if I would do this for you it would cost you around 2-3$ as custom print.
Basically friends or someone left you 4-5$ because they are amazed by custom print and they give you like this nice tip.
Sometimes its discussable, because your print can fail (really low rate, depends on settings and printer guy experiences most) and you can throw everything after 1,5 hours into trash bin. And of course more complex and longer printing models are adding to this, but it is not that much issue as you could think. More likely its user error than printer itself.
Thank you for such a comprehensive answer.
One last question that comes to mind… does unused filament go off? Let’s say you buy some red filament and only use half of it and don’t need any for 12 months, will it still be usable? I ask this as 2D ink cartridges have a nasty tendency to dry up over time. That was always one of the hidden extra costs of 2D printing
@mattswain Filament is pretty prone to humidity. It absorbs water from air and more % it has more % it will fail in some way - inconsistent material input, poor detail, damaged surface… this is something that is solved by drying filament in little special dryer. After that its good to store it in closed package or if your printer has it, like mine, you got “magazine” which is closed and filament is stored here.
For example I got humidity around 50% at home and good humidity for filament is 10-30%, so I dry it and store it.
But I wont lie… I got here filaments openned over 12+ months just in open air, so it has more humidity than it should and it prints fine. If I see problem, I dry and do reprint.
More likely it can happen that filament dry over some time a lot and it can crack and its unusable…
Also for this purpose… I printed into my “magazine” little bins where I put little silica gel balls (like when you buy new shoes, there is little bag with it) but I got a little more special ones which are blue, they absorb humidity and when they are done they are red. Then I put them into dryer or microwave to restore them and I can use them again - same like some bags for car interiors when you have problems with humidity in winter.
But all problems mentioned above arent in real world that big problem. Overall filament has pretty good “life” length.
Thank you again for such a detailed answer 
At the risk of hijacking the thread, I switched to a color laser printer for this very reason. I was tired of replacing nearly full ink cartridges because the nozzles had become clogged and wouldn’t clear. The laser toner cartridges are somewhat expensive, but they don’t go bad. They last seemingly forever, and the print quality is much sharper than an ink jet.
That sounds like such a fun project—love the idea of a mini Fender combo as a pick holder, super creative! I’m not much of a woodworker myself, but I do love mixing music with my other hobbies—I’ve been dabbling in digital art lately and started designing custom pedalboard decals. It’s awesome how music can sneak into all our other interests. Would love to see a pic of your 3D print if you’re up for sharing!
@netahnpaul86 Custom pedalboard sounds great. Can you share?
I will make photo of my printer when I get home. I will add electric guitar and little ukulele that I printed too. Its been some time I shared it here, so why not again. And also I got Justin holding guitar 3D printed picture too.
