I’m 54 years of age…that age when most guitar players reminisce about playing in bands when they were much younger. Like many, perhaps an acoustic guitar close at hand to plunk on. I played rock, blues…was a frontman in the big hair 80’s era. After watching a number of Antoine Dufour and Andy McKee videos of their phenomenal modern acoustic folk instrumental play and buying their music, becoming essentially a fan…I had to buy my first of several short capos. Seeing Antoine finger tap, play above the capo…well all quite amazing.

I bought one of these short capos, then two…and now play as many as 3 capos at a time to create intriguing alternative tunings. The fingerstyle or strum/flat picking becomes so intuitive, and I’ve enjoyed many a good night now entertaining friends at dinners and get togethers. I don’t need to play established songs but your ear hears variations easily and those that have some ability to make up songs on the spot will go nuts playing these capos. It seriously makes you a much better player in everyone’s mind. I have played out publically again and produced a number of CD’s of my own. It is like experiencing a rebirthing on the guitar and only wished I would have had something like the Kyser short capo about 25 years ago!

No matter where I play out publically folks are quite taken by the sound, which strikes you as though nearly two guitar players were playing. Has real presence. Guitar players can’t help but come out of the wood work to approach near and watch, and are immediately taken in and ask…”where the heck do you get one of those?”

I would recommend David Wilcox’s “The Partial Capo” book to help you discover the chord possibilites…the basics, tricks and so forth. I was and still am a long time electric guitar player, fan, lovin’ the blues especially…but have rediscovered the acoustic guitar over the past three years or so. Don’t hesitate to buy one of these and don’t be surprised not to see regular music stores not carry them as they operate by supply and demand, and folks don’t know what they are…but I know without a doubt that if I set up in a music store and just played freely the store would order a bunch of ’em and always have them on hand! Get one! Get two!

My buddy and I played in a contemporary praise and worship band in college, and we played a lot of songs in an open suspended tuning. We usually just took a regular capo and turned it upside down and had to fidget with it for 5 minutes to get it to set right. I had no idea capos like this existed. So glad I found it!

I saw someone use this capo at a coffee house performance, and was impressed.

I was able to make interesting music in less that 5 minutes of playing around with different open-tunings in combination with setting the capo at various frets. Not intuitive – but also satisfying results come from changing the orientation of the capo – i.e. covering strings 5-4-3 vs. 2-3-4.

I’m glad I purchased this.