Shubb Partial Capos

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I was introduced to the concept of partial capoing many years ago by the great acoustic guitarist Harvey Reid and by Jeff Hickey, who developed the Third Hand capo (an elastic capo designed exclusively for partial capoing). These guys both were users of Shubb capos for "regular" capoing, but were WAY into the possibilities of partial capoing. In addition to using a Third Hand, I noticed that Harvey had modified one of his Shubb capos by cutting it down so that it skipped the outside string and covered only the next three. He got some really wonderful sounds with this partial capo. Shortly thereafter I saw Chris Proctor using one he had customized, evidently inspired by Harvey.

It wasn't good enough to just cut off a portion of our guitar capo, so we built a crook into the frame that allows the capo to clearly skip the outside string without buzzing, while covering the next three. Then we altered the pad to line up with this new geometry. We nicknamed the odd looking new capo the Dogleg because of its angular bend. We didn't use that name officially when it went to market, but for a few years we still called it the Dogleg around the shop.

It skips the outside string and covers the next three, either 2-3-4 or 5-4-3 (emulating DADGAD tuning)

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Skips the sixth string (low E) and covers the other five, emulating a drop-D tuning. Applied from above the neck (from the bass side), it cleanly skips the bass string and centers solidly on the neck while capoing the other five strings. While it is possible to accomplish the same thing on many necks using our one of our regular capos, they need to be applied from the treble side, off-center to avoid the bass string. Many users prefer to apply the capo from the bass side. This capo is designed to be applied from the bass side, with a step built in to skip over the bass E string, and it centers properly for improved stability.