The Best Capo for your 12 String

G7th Newport 12 String Capo

Hey folks, this time it’s a short one for two reasons. First, I love the playing and the sound of a 12 string guitar. Second, most capos don’t do an effective job on a 12 string guitar.

When you look at the string layout on a 12 string, or really an instrument with what are called courses of strings in pairs, the strings are commonly of different diameters, and thus are at different distances from the fretboard. So what we see is not a flat plane of strings when we look across the fretboard, instead we see some strings as higher than others, like peaks and valleys.

This means that the amount of string movement required to fret the string differs.

It’s also common for capos to exert a consistent downforce on all strings regardless of the distance that they may move. Capos that use spring tension to compress the strings commonly exert more downward pressure and as the action at a particular fret may be higher closer to the body than at the nut, will make the strings go increasingly sharp as you capo further and further up the neck.

I will never recommend capos that use springs that you have to squeeze to open the capo, or capos that use elastic straps because you have no control of downforce at all and the probability of pushing strings sharp is very high.

There are much better capos that give you control over the downforce being exerted by the capo, but in most all cases, the radius of the capo pad is fixed and if it is significantly different from the radius of your nut and saddles could cause other tuning issues. Now add to this the 12 string issues of strings of difference heights.

You might find that setting the tension for the heavier (taller) strings works great, but the lighter strings (E, A, D, G) in the top courses don’t sound right, they sound dead or damped. So you increase the tension to make them sound correct, but this extra pressure may make the heavier strings go sharp.

I get that some people will not care at all and happily live with being out of tune. However if you are not one of these people, you understand clearly that for a 12 string guitar, the capo pad cannot be evenly flat. It needs to take on a subtle sawtooth pattern to clamp the strings at any suitable fret with the least down pressure possible that still sounds good.

When you first work with a capo like this, you’ll be surprised at how much better your capoed 12 string sounds. Is it worth the expense of a capo just for a 12 string? That’s up to you.. As a player with multiple 12 strings, both acoustic and electric, the expense of a dedicated 12 string capo is worth it to me, and as three of my 12 strings are on doublenecks, I may be (often am) using another capo on the 6 string neck.

Now I will save your some time searching. The capo you want to buy for your 12 string guitar is the G7th Newport Capo for 12 String.

The image of the G7th Newport 12 string shows the unique compensated capo pad

Now while I am celebrating this capo, do note that it expects the octave string to come before the primary note string (lighter string first low to high). You will also note the the amount of compensation for string height changes as you move from low notes to high notes, as on the high E, where both E strings are the same height and the same pitch. On some guitars, the octave string comes after the primary pitch string and this model will not be of help to you.

In that case you could go to the regular G7th Newport, the G7th Performance 3 or my preference in that case, the G7th Heritage which instead of being a clamp style capo, is a cradle style capo. Shubb also does a superb cradle capo. For a six string capo, similar tot he G7th Performance 3, the D’Addario Pro Plus Capo is excellent and quite a bit less expensive. D’Addario also makes a very good cradle capo.

The one thing common to all is that you the player set the capo down pressure and there is none by default. This is unlike the very common trigger style capos such as those from Kyser with the big arms that stick up in your way. Those are very quick to put on and that’s about all that I can say about them that is good.

G7th Heritage 12 String

Wrapping Up

A capo is an awesome tool, and every guitar player will benefit from having at least one in his or her kit. But the needs of a 12 string are different from the needs of a 6 string so get the right tool for the job.

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