Weissenborn style guitar Capo

[delab]

Some may have seen I've recently been on the look out for a new all solid wood Weissenborn style guitar.  During my search I did a lot of reading on various forums and suchlike and pretty much everywhere I looked I came across questions relating to Weissenborn capos so I thought I would share this here.

Originally I had a floating style 'Woodshed' capo bought on eBay.  It did the job, so to speak, but I really didn't enjoy the trampoline effect of the floating capo and lack of sustain.  Then one day I stumbled across this capo made by Hannah Guitars, based in Canada, called 'The Strut'.  Whilst a little pricey I ordered one and I was very pleasantly surprised.

No trampoline effect, much improved sustain, easy access to the first fret and easily fitted/ adjusted... Problem solved!  What a great product and the only one of its sort that I have come across at least.

I have no association with the maker just thought folk here may be interested.  I've attached a few photos and here is a link to the website

www.hannahguitars.com/product-page/the-strut-6-string-lapsteel-dobro-capo

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[pete1951]

It looks like a well machined , and easy to fit capo which would work on any lap steel Dobro etc. If the strings are perfectly parallel to the fret board you could make a simple triangle of wood, possibly topped with a bit of fret wire and with a grove on the base to go over frets on the finger board.

I do have a couple of ‘lap’ instruments, but never play tunes that would need a specific bass note, so have never bothered with a capo, I may make one of my triangles to see if the concept works.
Pete



Of coarse, if the strings are not parallel you’ll need a load of shims and spacers to get it to fit right on every key

If you have access to the tools this would be very easy to make, you could even have one cut in half to give different bass and treble open strings. I have seen several people on standard acoustic guitar do this with 2 capos, to get a dropped D shape tuning in several keys without retuning the guitar