You’re a guitar, banjo, or mandolin picker looking for the perfect plectrum to pluck your instrument. But you don’t want just any old piece of plastic. You want something special.

Hello, Honey Picks!

Made in Taylorsville by brothers Rick and Andrew Calhoun, Honey Picks come in a variety of eye-popping colors: turquoise, green, purple, golden translucent. Some have shiny surfaces; others are rough and textured. Some are almost paper thin; others are thick as a credit card. Some have holes in them; others are solid. Several have wildly designed indentations — looking suspiciously like a honeycomb — to help with your grip.

The Calhouns’ picks are unlike any you’ve ever seen, and in the five years since they first posted their Honey Picks on Instagram, the brothers’ website has attracted customers here in North Carolina and around the world. You can even have them custom-make picks for your specific musical personality. Tie-dye? Sure. Rustic-looking wood? Not a problem. Picks with dayglow lightning bolts running through them? Why not?

“For that one, we used a pigment in our resin that’s a glow pigment,” Rick says. “And that’s what my brother does.” He laughs. “He’s the creative mind that came up with that idea.”

photograph by iancucristi/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Rick has always been on the hunt for the perfect plectrum. Almost every Sunday at Crosspoint Church in Taylorsville, he strums the classic 1965 Gibson J-45 acoustic that his grandfather handed down to him. “I was infatuated with picks,” he says. “After performing for a long time, I discovered that they make a big difference in the way I play, so I kept trying different kinds.”

Growing up in Alexander County, the two brothers were four years apart and very different. Rick, the oldest, liked music and sports; Andrew gravitated to cars and computers.

Being a picker, Rick knew what materials would bring out the right tones in a stringed instrument. Andrew knew how to operate the laser machines that turn those materials into beautiful, multicolored picks. “Rick will have an idea, and I’ll have to figure out how to make it easier, make it faster, or …” — he says with a chuckle — “if we can even make it at all.”

Honey Picks turned out to be the perfect opportunity for the brothers to pursue a shared project. “It kind of brought us together,” Rick says. “We work well as a team.”

Oh, and the name? It’s a nod to their hometown, where bees pollinate all those rolling apple orchards, providing a byproduct of golden honey. “Honey is one of my favorite treats,” Rick says. “So we figured that naming it Honey Picks was our way of giving back locally what’s really neat about this area.”

For more information, visit honey-picks.com.