Shubb Original C-Series Steel String Guitar Capo Nickel

When the Shubb capo was first introduced about 40 years ago, guitarists throughout the world fell in love with it. They’re still in love with it today. We’ve given it a few tweaks through the years, but its basic mechanical principle remains the same: a unique over-center locking mechanism that provides an unrivaled combination of power, speed, accuracy and ease of use. One smooth flip of the lever locks it securely in place, and removes it just as quickly.

And the Shubb capo is BY FAR the best at not creating tuning problems. Its soft, resilient rubber is specially designed to work just like a fingertip, so it doesn’t bend the strings over the frets. Its closing action is just like your hand, so it doesn’t pull the string off center. As a result, no re-tuning is necessary!

Shubb Capos work on an “over-center” locking principle. If you’ve used one, you know the feeling. As you close the capo onto the neck, it passes through a point of greatest resistence (the center), then relaxes somewhat into its locked position.

We’ve made up a name for the the difference between the amounts of pressure applied at these two points; we call it dropoff.

More dropoff means a greater difference between pressure encountered as it passes through center, and the pressure applied in the locked position. Less dropoff means a lesser difference between pressure encountered as it passes through center, and the pressure applied in the locked position.

Offhand you might imagine that the least amount of dropoff would be best, but that’s not exactly the case. If you have too little dropoff, the lock is less secure and there is a risk of the capo opening accidentally. It NEEDS that dropoff in order to work. But if you have too much dropoff, too great a force is applied to the guitar neck while closing, and there could be too little pressure applied in the closed position for the truest tone.

So you see, there is a JUST RIGHT amount of dropoff that makes for perfect capoing.