Tony D'Andrea Jr.
In 1962,Tony Sr.'s son, Tony Jr., joined the company. Coming out of the Aircraft industry and familiar with industrial plastics, he pioneered the use of some of the plastics still used in modern picks. A Dupont acetal polymer, Delrin was introduced as the D'Andrea Delrex line. A colorful sheet plastic, it had some of the tonal qualities of celluloid, excellent endurance, but could not be colored in shell patterns. As a sheet plastic however, it could easily be produced in many shapes. Today, D'Andrea offers it in seven shapes and six gauges. The same material is also able to be molded. So Tony Jr. developed uniquely designed molds to accommodate the needs of the faster paced music of the Rock revolution. His molds had innovative sharply beveled edges to provide fast release with clearer tone. Those molds are used to produce the three Delrin lines: Jetex with a multi-leveled gripping surface, and the Brites and Pro-Grip Brites lines with Fluorescent pigmented colors. A new stronger Nylon formula was also developed and used in these sharp edged molds.
As the "standard" #351 pick emerged as the dominant pick shape, the need for 59 shapes diminished, but Tony wanted to increase its versatility. In 1974, he introduced the 4th and 5th sound: .58mm Thin /Medium and .84mm Medium/Heavy. Today picks come in 8 gauges, up to 2.00mm super heavy. As for shapes, 10 still remain from the early days.
Still the professionals favorite for its unique sound quality, the breadth of the celluloid material was necessarily reduced. Because of its constantly increasing cost, many colors have been eliminated. To fill players' need for an economical pick, Tony introduced a polymer plastic, V-Resin. It mimics most celluloid properties, but its lower material cost, domestic availability, and familiar colors make it widely popular. It is available in jewel like transparent hues and stone patterns. Variations of it are used for several premium pick lines: SPECTRA-PLEC, SPECTRA SHARP-transparent jewel colors, ULTRA PLEC in burled wood, malachite and crystal patterns and PRO PLEC, a super heavy, rich shell patterned pick in vintage shapes.
Another area of innovation for Tony Jr. has been the pick imprinting processes. From the very beginning, simple hot stamping had been used to identify the picks, first with a D'Andrea logo and then simple block letter dies for a player name. These were originally imprinted in one shot, foot pedal operated machines. One of the first to make the player imprint popular was Nick Lucas. In the '30s, using the old round top #351 pick Luigi developed for him, each pick was imprinted with his logo and sold as a "Nick Lucas" pick. The '50s saw the advent of mass producing private labeled picks for guitar companies, requiring sophisticated automated printing and packaging. The '60s was the heyday of rock and every player and store wanted their pick personalized. Tony developed some of the fastest multi-shot equipment for punching, imprinting and bagging. In the '90s he revolutionized the imprint process with the introduction of pad printing. It overcame some of the speed and design limitations of hot stamping. Now very intricate logos can be produced by computer generation and they can be multicolored. By 1996, even a photograph could be imprinted on a pick!
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