A New Guitar Toy

I like finding new ways to play guitar, especially when they’re something I can do with my existing guitars without spending $$. This time it’s the Harmonic Capo from Weaseltrap, which I learned about from a Guitar Player newsletter. It’s a cool little dealie with six rubber feet that you position over the 12th fret to give you harmonics on selected strings.

The Harmonic Capo

It was a little hard to position properly on my old Seagull Artist acoustic (the neck heel gets in the way) but once I had it on there the musical possibilities quickly became obvious. I quickly came up with a little ditty that I recorded (below) and may work into a full song at some point.

I’m totally in favor of anything that makes my playing sound more impressive. In this case, I’m using the capo to give me an octave touch harmonic on the D, G, B, and high E strings, with the low E string tuned to dropped-D. When I fret a note it plays at the normal pitch, so playing open and fretted notes creates a nice contrast.

If you’re a guitarist and are interested, you can find out more at Bob Kilgore’s website. It’s $34.95, making it the most expensive capo I’ve ever purchased, but it gives you effects you can’t get any other way. Cool.