29 Worship Tools for Under $29, Part 11

By Jon Nicol

#19 - The Cut Capo
I’m not sure how many years ago it was, but I had an extra Kyser Capo laying around that someone had abandoned at my church. I didn’t really need it, and I didn’t know anyone at the time who needed. So there it sat. Until…

I heard about a technique to get a DADGAD (alternate tuning) sound, without having to learn all wonky fingerings that come with alternate tunings. It was achieved by a partial or “cut” capo. So out came the razor blade and off went ½ of the extra capo.

I sliced away the padded rubber bar that presses strings 6, 2 and 1. Then with these newly formed voids, I could capo at the second and while still leaving strings 6, 2, 1 open. The result was the ability to  emulate an Open DADGAD sound (actually, it’s whole step up – EBEABE – but “eebee-abe” doesn’t have the same ring as “dadgad”). But again, none of the foreign, open-tuning fingerings were required.

So if you have an extra capo laying around and you don’t mind risking lacerated fingers, go ahead and cut your own capo.

But…for those of you who can recognize frugality crossing the line to stupidity, just buy a cut capo. The most popular and easy to use cut capo is the Kyser Short-Cut Capo.

Whenever I lead from acoustic, I almost always play at least one or two songs with the cut capo. I’ve found it especially helpful when I’m playing with another acoustic. Rather than fight over the mushy middle with open position chords, I move the cut capo up the neck with a standard capo behind it.

For example, if you were playing a song in G, like Matt Redman’s 10,000 Reasons, put your cut capo at fret 5, the standard capo at 3, transpose your chords up a 5th (that is, a G becomes a B, an Am becomes an Em, etc.) and bam – you’ve got an almost mandolin-ish sounding instrument.

So to whet your appetite to buy this worship tool, here’s a video lesson I did for cut capo. If you to see more diagrams and notes, you can find that at the guitar lesson page.

Question: What's been your experience with a cut capo? I'd love to see/hear it in action - include in the comments links to video or recordings of you using it.

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July 10, 2012