Leaderboard

Finally! A Use For A Capo! aka Nut Clamp...

OK kids, grandpa's gonna lay an egg for you. My camera's on vacation, so this is all in my head (and fortunately on my guitar!). If you buy "Tidy Cats" cat litter in the big yellow buckets - not the giant, 37 pounders but the 25's (or so?) there is a pull strip opener that runs about 2/3 of the way around the bucket. After you pull it off and "do" your cats, Look in the corners of the red or blue strip. There is a little ledge running around the inside. So, you cut off a piece 2" or 1.75" or so. Then, you slide it in-between the strings and the fretboard, any old fret you want, with the ledge over the fret you want to clamp. Then, you put your Schubb capo directly over the fret, right up to the edge of the miraculously re-conceived "SLIDE GUITAR CAPO RISER." Miraculous, because now your strings are raised up (Hallelujah!) approximately 0.110"  higher than the fretboard, or 0.055" above the fret.

IN TUNE.... :blob7:

There are a few piffely little variables; sometimes you have to sand off a few molding tweebles or lower it a hair by filing on the ledge part. Or something, just fix it. I have a few genuine "dobro capos" but they're like way-stupid complex and un-wieldly compared to this, and not one bit more effective. My first really good guitar teacher/adviser (40 YEARS ago!) told me to play slide guitar by imitating good female singers. He had a point, there are some nuances of changing the pitch and tone after the string is already plucked that slides excel at. Hallelujah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDJgxE-0PZI&feature=related 
 
I think I'm picturing what you're saying, but I'm not getting why you'd want to do it. Is this to temporarily set up a guitar for slide?
 
Either temporary to match open strings to a key, or if you're in an open tuning, this will put all the open strings where you want them. It is possible to play a lot of different keys and riffs without this - but Derek Trucks is the only one to do it! I had actually quit playing slide for several years whn I got my pedal steel guitar - slide seemed like taking your Big Wheel out for a spin while the Ferrari got dusty. But around 2006, Sonny Landreth blew up my brain, again. But, he travels with four guitars, and a tech to tune 'em to any of five different tunings. On this particular night, Mr. Landreth was walking on water and raising the dead:

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/SonnyLandreth2007-11-09TacomaWA.asx
 
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