SpiderCapo Standard - The Studio Grade Capo

I researched this capo A LOT before purchase. I’ve read many reviews elsewhere and all of the reviews here. I went ahead and purchased this capo and it’s brilliant. It functions exactly as it is designed to and has opened up a whole new world of creativity. For the life of me a can’t figure out how others can manage or claim that this device damaged anything other than their ego. It is made out of a polymer like plastic. Where it clamps on the guitar neck is padded. If clamped correctly and in the correct area (as per included instructions) it performs flawlessly. I’ve placed it on my Taylor 6 and my Taylor baritone 8. Fully adjustable and fits both perfectly with no buzzing or throwing out of pitch no matter where it’s placed on the neck. This is a great product and I highly recommend it.

So, this capo is exceptional at what it does. It is designed for fretting individual strings for unique tunings. Some things I want to address that I have seen in other reviews are as follows (my testing was done on a classical guitar):First, damage to the guitar neck/bridge. It won't leave any kind of marks unless you overtighten it. This isn't a woodshop project, the clamp doesn't need to be exceptionally tight to function. When it is fastened properly, it is sturdy and the padding is more than enough to prevent any kind of scuff marks.Second, the fretting mechanisms and bending strings sharp. It definitely can bend them sharp on the lower strings, but the fix is to simply engage the fretting mechanism less so it isn't pushing the string down as aggressively. Each individual fretter is relatively stable in every position I tried, so adjust by ear to your needs.Third, the construction. The thing is way more durable than I anticipated it being. While I won't test it for my wall's sake, I am certain I could throw it at the wall out of anger and it would be unscathed. My wall would be a different story.Final thing is fitting it on the neck. It fits well, just adjust the width. It has a deceptively accepting size range for necks. It works on my classical guitar, and it looks like it would work for any 6 string by design (given the 6 fretters). It likely would work on some extended range guitars (clearance looks large enough for a 7 string and possibly an 8 string, but I don't own one to personally test it on).Definitely worth giving it a shot. Opens a lot of doors for interesting experiments for guitar for sure. I'll update my review when I have tried it on bass.

I can agree for the most part with all the reviews here, both giving credit to to the positive reviews and those that are no so much.I became interested in this capo after watching Brian Gore play with one many years ago when these first came out. I thought it was cool that there was a device that could let you change the pitch of a string on the fly- making for some creative possibilities over and above just using these for alternate tunings.The product is really cool in that you can pretty much get any tuning you want- and if you can't, you can even use 2 at a time (as Brian Gore has demonstrated). It works well for me but I must agree with reviewers here that it is not a user friendly product. Fortunately I'm a couch player right now and have all the time I need to tweak this- problem is you need a lot of it. Once you get the device to clamp on the instrument then you must also position the legs. If you don't get them just right you will have buzz and intonation problems. I've been playing for over 20 years and cannot tell when the device is properly set up that there are intonation problems. However, I know that my ear is not as good as some people (there are folks who are hired to work with luthiers and as techs in shops because of an ear so good it is nearly a curse) so that is not a slap to those who complain about intonation- I'm just saying that I cannot hear it when I finally get the device to behave.Just like playing the guitar itself- you will get better at setting this capo up as you practice. Instead of buying a cut capo for a song I want to learn or cutting one up myself (think Trace Bundy), I will just try to get more adept to using this. Conceptually it is the most amazing capo ever made and will get better in future generations.Kysers are great for quick changes. Shubbs are fantastic for the "stay in place" and reduction of intonation problems. This capo makes you able to be a tuning superhero. What could be wrong with that? On another note- if it is good enough for Brian Gore or Antoine Dufour it is good enough for me.

I am not a big capo user. Strictly as a capo, I would say this is somewhat awkward to use. It cannot be easily slapped onto the neck for a quick key change, but I assume most people would not be buying it for that reason. It's appeal is the ability to capo only specific strings at a given fret, allowing the un-capoed strings to be played with their natural open tone. One ought to expect some degree of difficulty in achieving this more advanced level of capoing. It is important that the individual string blocks be slid to the correct position above the strings. That isn't hard to do, but if one is careless in this adjustment, the block will not come straight down on top of the string. If that happens, there can be buzzing, or the string may be pushed slightly to the side, resulting in a pitch change. On several guitars, including both a wider necked classical and an electric, I was able to fit it to the neck, and obtain a cleanly capoed sound. The classical neck extended it to its limit, but it still did do the job it was designed to do.One important point about its use for alternate tunings, is that it does not actually change the pitch of any of your strings, so notes that you play on frets above the capo will have the same sound they normally would, and not the sound they would have if the guitar were actually re-tuned in an alternate tuning. In other words, if you like to use an alternate tuning to play slide guitar, this device won't help at all. It is still, just a capo in that respect. I would say, that limits its use in experimenting with alternate tunings. I had been wondering about experimenting with using an all 4ths tuning (E-A-D-G-C-F) so that all patterns could be moved without having to allow for the 3rd interval between the 2nd and 3rd strings. I realized that the SpiderCapo could not assist me with that.I do like experimenting with high neck open-stringed chords, and it has its benefits for things like that. Also any song that require the use of open drone strings can benefit from this capo. Some of the chords obtained in this way can be quite beautiful, and I don't really know of any other way they could be achieved without one of these. For example if you capo some of the notes at the fifth fret, and then play up at the 12th, Its possible to let those 5th fret capoed string to ring out clearly. You would never want to do an altered tuning that stretched a string to achieve a sound that high You would most likely break a sting if you tried--not to mention the added stress on the neck.Another positive for the capo, is the ability to flip any of the string blocks up or down during a song if you want to. I don't know of anything else that gives you that capability.It is a unique capo and has some specific unique advantages and enables playing techniques not offered by other capos or even by the use of alternate tunings. On the other hand, if what you are looking for is an easy way of achieving an alternate tuning, that's not what these capos do. If you get it for the wrong reason, you will be disappointed with it.

I bought one of these and had a bit of fun with it. I think the concept is great, but the execution is a bit weak. The plastic parts are not that easy to adjust and do not stay in place all that well. But the big problem, as another reviewer noted, is the intonation. I would say that four out of six widgets give something close to an acceptable sound, but widget 1 and 6 tend to have problems. The string does not ring clear, especially on low "e," which sounds dull. I wanted to be fair to this company, which has an interesting product, so I just worked on it again for a while to make sure that critique is valid. It is.This product belongs to a uniquely frustrating category: things that almost work. You can do things with the SpiderCapo that you can't do with other capos, and it gives you some neat effects that are a lot of fun. But because the ultimate sound quality is not going to be there, you can't really record what you come up with or perform live with it because you just aren't "there" with the sound. Who wants a lovely chord or riff that has a dull bottom note?That said, if you restrict yourself to the middle four strings, the device works at an acceptable level, though even then I have the impression that the intonation is not brilliant (after working with this device for a while, you start to doubt your own judgment on intonation, and my ear is not that of a professional musician or gifted amateur, so I'm hedging here).I think this is a very promising device, and I would be willing to pay more money for a solider version with quality parts and construction. If you ever bought a Shubb, you know what I am talking about when I say "quality" and "solider." I wish Shubb would buy the idea from these folks and bring out a version which has Shubb precision and endurance. That would be a match made in musical heaven. But until then, I can't really recommend this device.

I was almost turned off by some of the negative reviews - people make it sound like it’s badly made or will damage your guitar. But it’s awesome - and mine had a bonus! - Read to the bottom ;-)After receiving it, I can see why maybe “certain” people have an issue with it - it takes slightly more attention to put it on properly and align it with the strings - the individual “fingers” of the capo slide side-to-side to fit the wide variety of string spacing that are out there, and the capo has to be put on facing a specific way.I think certain people *didn’t read the manual* and just tried to clamp it on. If you put it on backwards it won’t work quite right. If you don’t align it right behind the fret it won’t work quite right.But if you take *15 seconds* to read the instructions, and an additional 15 seconds to put it on right, it opens up a whole world of sonic possibilities. You can sound like Sonic Youth to Joni Mitchell to the classic ring of open tunings :)AND I got a surprise bonus in mine - free access to 500 hours’ worth of professional lessons from a famous/popular guitar lesson website... I can’t guarantee that will be in yours but it was an awesome surprise!

Right out the box, the pad on the bolt side wasnt even attached. Already fallen off. And thats the reason i bought a new one to begin with.I have bought 3 of these over the years. I have the same exact problem on all 3 of them. The little pads fall off and slide around. This causes issues with a) the capo not working at all. B) the intonation. C) protecting your gear.On my cheap guitars it holds without the pads somewhat better then with the pads. However i am not putting this on my taylor that way because i am not going to have clamp damage on the neck.No matter how much i tighten the capo, the pads just slip right off and it pushes the capo up to the point it doesnt hold the strings down. This is extremely frustrating.I really love the product but this quality issue practically makes it unusable. I have to super glue the pads on and that only holds for x amount of time. I believe i will be buying some normal cheap capo's instead and modify them to the tunings i desire to have with this device. Hopefully they do a redesign of this product that has longevity and works right out the gate.

This works great for trying new alternate tuning and it is harder to setup than a regular capo but it's so versatile it's well worth it.For performing it's not practical if your having to take it on and off, but in that case a good work around is to modify a regular capo.So you experiment with the spider and if you find a setting that you really like then it's pretty simple to modify a regular capo (remove the sections of the rubber pad that would mimic the spidercapo).Like the F, Bb Major (1,1,0,0,1,1) is an easy one and it can be used on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd frets. I simply modified a spare Kyser capo I got on sale and it works great. Of course you can ruin the capo if you do it wrong so use a spare, and you only need to do this if your performing with one guitar and need to move it or take it on and off during the performance.