Some guitars (like certain vintage Fenders) feature rounded boards, whereas others are near flat. Radius refers to the curvature of this vital part of your guitar. You might be confused by all this talk of fretboard radiuses, but you needn't be.

At first, it can seem a little confusing, but with our expert knowledge, you'll soon have the right one for your instrument. There are loads of different capos, all of which will work on different instruments. It’ll likely suit technically adept acoustic fingerstylists but we’d recommend it for any player seeking fresh inspiration. Still, if a capo can fuel new creative ideas, that alone makes it worth the price of entry. Also, unclamped strings can’t be fretted at the capo’d position which is a weird quirk above or below the capo is all gravy though. The SpiderCapo is suitable for any fretboard radius, but you’ll be adjusting pressure on each individual string – which is a relatively slow process.

You can only capo one fret however, so more complex chordal tunings are not an option. You could, for instance, place a SpiderCapo at 2nd position, clamp the fretted strings of an open A chord and leave the others open – that’s open A tuning. Unclamped strings can’t easily be played at capo’d fretĪ creative take on a humble device, the SpiderCapo allows you to clamp each string individually, in turn offering up a world of alternate tunings – many that you might not have otherwise tried. At the end of this article, we have an in-depth buying advice section where you can learn more, or just keep scrolling to see our top picks. There are a lot of different guitars out there, and thus, a lot of different capos, so you’ll need to make sure you’re fully armed with the knowledge to get the best capo for your guitar. It also offers up some interesting possibilities when using open strings, as you can use the same open chord shapes with drastically different results, giving you chords that wouldn’t be possible to fret without the capo applied. The use of a capo can just be as simple as transposing an open chord progression to a different key, or as complicated as revoicing a chord progression for two guitars during recording. Your capo will also change the feel of your guitar strings, as it shortens the scale length when applied.

Instead of changing the pitch down it changes it up – albeit only for the open strings, as your fretted notes remain the same. A capo is fastened or clamped across the strings of your guitar, essentially changing the tuning of your instrument in one fell swoop.

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