How to Make your Own Capo - The Makeshift Capo

The administrator of The Stringery, Elwood has been playing guitar since he was a Sophomore in high school. He decided to take it up after deciding it would make him more interesting.

Feature | How To

How to Make your Own Capo - The Makeshift Capo

Step 1:Get Materials

You will need a pencil and rubber bands. The amount of rubber bands you need depends on how tense the strings are on your guitar. Generally classical and electric guitars will need very few but you will need a lot for acoustic (more than you see in the picture).

if your going to be rocking out acoustic your probably going to want thicker rubberbands too.

Step 2: Sharpen Pencil

Now you’ll need to sharpen the pencil(or break it…or cut it). Make it about 4.5 inches (or 12 centimeters for all you metric system users out there! :-). I highly recommend chopping off the tip as I poked myself a few times in making my own right away. Besides, you won’t be writing with the pencil anymore (I hope).

Step 3: Prepare Brace

Turn your guitar over and place a single rubber band on it as you see in the picture. This part is a bit tough but you’ll need to hold the pencil upsidedown on the fretboard while you stretch a rubberband across the back of the neck over the rubberband you layed down. Everything should be held together and you can begin putting the rest of the rubberbands down. I recommend thin rubberbands for classical and electric guitars and thick ones for acoustics.

Step 4:Test

Everytime you add a few bands your going to want to turn the guitar over and see if all the strings are being pressed down. As I stated before, an electric and classical won’t take as many as an acoustic - so test after every band. Once all the strings are pressed down your ready to proceed to the next step!

Step 5:Bundling

Remember that rubberband you layed down on the neck that didn’t wrap around the pencil? It’s going to be used to bundle everything together so it stays together. Use it to tie the bundle of rubberbands together(treat the two loops as if they were single strings and tye as you would your shoes - but double knot it).

Removing the Capo

Removing is easy. Take off the rubberbands a few at a time from one side(but not all, it’s too much tension and you probably won’t be able to). When you remove it - it will look like a big bundled mess - but it always looks good when you put it on.

Putting the Capo Back on

Loop the pencil through all the loops on one side of the rubberbands. Then stretch them all across to the other side and over the pencil. Again, only do a few at a time as doing them all at once is a lot of tension.

Tips

Don’t use a painted pencil as the paint may rub off on your guitar.
Never leave the capo on your guitar. It loses tension when stretched out for a long time.

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Comments(8)

Buying Your First Guitar
(August 6, 2008)

[...] a capotasto (or capo for short) with your guitar, or learn how to make a make a makeshift one here - since many songs have simple chord positions but require a capo ["Wonderwall" by Oasis, "Be [...]
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priya
(August 31, 2008)

great dude…!!!
i had almost made one with a plastic ruler…but yours seems better…!
Andrew
(September 14, 2008)

why dont u just buy 1 they could cost as low as 6 dollars or as much as 25
Elwood
(November 9, 2008)

Why spend money when you can go free?
old greg
(November 10, 2008)

I made one like this, not with 10000 elastic bands tho, I needed it for I want it that way by backstreet boys (or the ebay song by wierd al) xD
Elwood
(November 10, 2008)

Yeah with a standard acoustic the strings are very tense, so you have to use a bunch of rubber bands. This works much better on a nylon or electric - although I’d like to see someone try it on a standard with a thick rubber band.
Michael
(November 13, 2008)

Hey,great instructions–I had a capo, and was all set to record a lead solo, only to find that the capo was only good for my acoustic, and not the electric…remembered hearing years ago that you could make a capo out of a pencil and rubberbands, did a Google search for instructions and found yours. The thing works great and now I can proceed without waiting for the otherwise necessary trip to the music store & outlay of twenty bucks–which I’ll do eventually anyway, but hate to hold up work for it. Thanks for this instructional!
Tom
(November 16, 2008)

Thanks for this, will be using it for Neyo - Because of You.

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