Guitar Capo More Harm Than Good?
 

I have an Epiphone Les Paul great deal from Zounds.

I'm conflicted about whether to buy a Capo. Very few songs require it to play and I wonder whether it will do more damage to the neck than it is to use it. Even the strings are a concern because I don't want to have to continually buy strings because of the Capo.

Any thoughts about it?

Another issue is there a string gauge thinner than 7's?
Is slinky the only manufacturer of 7's?

Thanks for all the replies

There's nothing wrong with using a capo. The only possible problem you could ever run into is if your capo has a rubber pad to protect the neck, and you have a nitrocellulose lacquer on your guitar.

This is rare. And expensive. Until you're spending WELL over £1k on a guitar, you will NEVER have to worry about this.

Secondly, it won't do anything to your strings that you won't do when you're playing anyway.

Thirdly, if you need a string guage thinner than 7, you're doing it wrong. 7 is unbelievably, incredibly stupidly thin. Its practically gossamer. Your guitar probably SHIPPED with 9s on it. 10s are considered standard.

And thats just for electric. On acoustics, 12s are considered "Medium guage".

Learning the guitar necessitates a certain amount of pain as your fingertips harden and develop in order to meet the demands of playing the instrument. Don't shy away from it. Stevie Ray Vaughan used 13's as STANDARD, and in the studio sometimes went as high as 18 guage for the HIGH E.

Finally, if you're worried about breaking strings, buy elixer brand strings, and buy a thicker guage like 10s or something. They'll last you a whole ****ton of a lot longer than 7s, 8s, or 9s of any brand. Like literally "I used to change my strings every 3 weeks, now I change them every 4 MONTHS, and they still feel better than the other brands used to when I changed those"

Thanks for the reply. At this point I'm opting to avoid the Capo as not very many songs use it and I don't want to develop bad habits or a reliance on it.

Do you actually know how to play yet? Or are you still overcome with excitement about your first guitar - because that doesn't really make sense.

There's no such thing as developing bad habits with a capo or 'reliance' on it. It's used to change the key of your guitar not as a barre chord replacement.

Besides a capo is usually only like $10-15. Pretty sure the vast majority of guitarists (especially acoustic) keep one in their cases. Think of it more like another type of effect, kind of like a slide.

...if you only saw the crazy sh*t I've done with a capo...
lol


Oh god, that sounds nasty. I didn't mean it to...

Yeah but you've also posted about playing church drums on acid so... yeah that's kind of expected (though really I'm thinking some kind of drum hardware fix in a pinch - that, or groupie nipple clamps)

Haha... no, just odd usage in general.
Normally, I'd expect to use the capo to transpose entire tunings, but I'd do weird open-tunings and capo the highest 3 strings halfway up the neck.
There was never any reason.

So basically a cross between Leo Kotke and Thurston Moore? Interesting hahaha

I have no idea.
I don't even know how to play proper chords...

I do everything by ear and experimentation, so you're probably more qualified to answer that than I am.

i only use a capo when i need to use a 12-string and the fingering is hard to do - e.g. The Eagles' Hotel California - the acoustic part

otherwise, i can make my own chord fingerings so why bother?

most of the time, I see people use it when they only know three chords and has to play in different keys