Guitar Capo More Harm Than Good?
 

I have an Epiphone Les Paul great deal from Zounds.

I'm conflicted about whether to buy a Capo. Very few songs require it to play and I wonder whether it will do more damage to the neck than it is to use it. Even the strings are a concern because I don't want to have to continually buy strings because of the Capo.

Any thoughts about it?

Another issue is there a string gauge thinner than 7's?
Is slinky the only manufacturer of 7's?

Thanks for all the replies

There's nothing wrong with using a capo. The only possible problem you could ever run into is if your capo has a rubber pad to protect the neck, and you have a nitrocellulose lacquer on your guitar.

This is rare. And expensive. Until you're spending WELL over £1k on a guitar, you will NEVER have to worry about this.

Secondly, it won't do anything to your strings that you won't do when you're playing anyway.

Thirdly, if you need a string guage thinner than 7, you're doing it wrong. 7 is unbelievably, incredibly stupidly thin. Its practically gossamer. Your guitar probably SHIPPED with 9s on it. 10s are considered standard.

And thats just for electric. On acoustics, 12s are considered "Medium guage".

Learning the guitar necessitates a certain amount of pain as your fingertips harden and develop in order to meet the demands of playing the instrument. Don't shy away from it. Stevie Ray Vaughan used 13's as STANDARD, and in the studio sometimes went as high as 18 guage for the HIGH E.

Finally, if you're worried about breaking strings, buy elixer brand strings, and buy a thicker guage like 10s or something. They'll last you a whole ****ton of a lot longer than 7s, 8s, or 9s of any brand. Like literally "I used to change my strings every 3 weeks, now I change them every 4 MONTHS, and they still feel better than the other brands used to when I changed those"

Thanks for the reply. At this point I'm opting to avoid the Capo as not very many songs use it and I don't want to develop bad habits or a reliance on it.

Do you actually know how to play yet? Or are you still overcome with excitement about your first guitar - because that doesn't really make sense.

There's no such thing as developing bad habits with a capo or 'reliance' on it. It's used to change the key of your guitar not as a barre chord replacement.

Besides a capo is usually only like $10-15. Pretty sure the vast majority of guitarists (especially acoustic) keep one in their cases. Think of it more like another type of effect, kind of like a slide.

...if you only saw the crazy sh*t I've done with a capo...
lol


Oh god, that sounds nasty. I didn't mean it to...

Yeah but you've also posted about playing church drums on acid so... yeah that's kind of expected (though really I'm thinking some kind of drum hardware fix in a pinch - that, or groupie nipple clamps)

Haha... no, just odd usage in general.
Normally, I'd expect to use the capo to transpose entire tunings, but I'd do weird open-tunings and capo the highest 3 strings halfway up the neck.
There was never any reason.

So basically a cross between Leo Kotke and Thurston Moore? Interesting hahaha

I have no idea.
I don't even know how to play proper chords...

I do everything by ear and experimentation, so you're probably more qualified to answer that than I am.

i only use a capo when i need to use a 12-string and the fingering is hard to do - e.g. The Eagles' Hotel California - the acoustic part

otherwise, i can make my own chord fingerings so why bother?

most of the time, I see people use it when they only know three chords and has to play in different keys

A capo will allow you to alter your sound to suit an arrangement better. You can transpose up a key so you can play something correctly if the original artist used a capo.

You can clamp a few strings and change a tuning completely without tuning up or tuning down.

A capo allows you to play with less tension so if barre chords are messing you up, a capo will alleviate some of that tension.

You can also get a spider capo which is what I have. It is a series of levers that clamp down individual strings. So if I want the second fret of the D, G, and A strings fretted, I just have to flip the switches.

Capos will do no damage to your guitar's neck or strings and 7's or lighter will snap pretty easily I would have thoughy. 9's are a better compromise of lightness against tone. Shubb capos are pretty good by the way, for about £20. Dont go for a cheap one as they dont stay in tune.

i only find it useful when i need to go from Open G to Open A

otherwise, i usually fuck around with it, in weird tunings as Freebase does

like a CCCDEE, with a capo on the 7th fret

I taught Freebase how to be awesome at guitar.

or just fuck that

ever tried a CCCCCC with a capo on the 11th?

Why wouldn't you just tune all the strings to B instead?

I usually stick with semi-well known but seldom used tunings.

DADFAC#
FACGCE
CACGCE
DADEAD

Things like that. I don't really mess with those really off the wall tunings like DDDDDD FGBBCDD or whatever.

I didn't really teach Freebase how to be awesome at guitar. We used to jam together and it was probably the most innovative period out of the entire time I've played guitar.

different intonation and string tension

1. Why are you playing with 7's??

2. A Capo is 20 bucks who cares.....just buy one if you dont use it then dont use it.

only about 8 bucks here

either Korean or Chinese-made, though

you could get the elastic one as well, that one's just under 2 bucks

I remember making a homemade capo with a pencil and a bootlace back in the day. Not pretty, but it worked.

Capos are really good imo, I use a capo all the time! Changing the pitch on the fly is pretty useful. And you can get some tone colours from a capo that you can't get so much normally. It's an interesting job to compensate for chords, keys and such but you learn to work with it.

And I second the guy who suggested a shubb capo, I use one of those, they're very good capos.